Charing Cross Road, London

Striking a light

Small-town shopkeepers like those in the excellent Turn Back Time: The High Street didn’t usually have shop fronts with the full complement of glittering effects that were sometimes seen in the Victorian period. But in London is was a different story. Where there were hundreds of shops competing for one’s attention, Victorian shop designers did everything they could to catch the eye of potential customers – bright colours, lots of lights, gilding, and lavish displays of goods.

Painted glass, often with mirror effects, was a favourite material for shop names, numbers, and glittering descriptions of the goods on sale, especially in the second half of the 19th century. Passing fashions and the fragility of glass mean that few of these dazzling signs have survived. Some of the best loved are on the umbrella shop in New Oxford Street that I blogged about a while back. This is another, on Smith’s tobacconists in Charing Cross Road. This was apparently the first shop to open when this stretch of the street was redeveloped at the end of the 1860s. The sparkling glass welcomes cigar-smokers in particular, as it did in the 19th century, testimony to the Victorian shopkeeper’s skill at attracting the notice and the money of those who passed by.