Stick-ons: 2
Another trawl through my archives threw up this window sign from Bromyard. The photograph is a few years old, so I’m not sure if the sign is still there. When I took the picture it was already time someone took this damp and dilapidated building in hand, though of course I hope that if they did, they managed to restore the flaking “BREAD” sign and perhaps even preserve the blue and yellow Procea one in the window.
Procea bread began in New Zealand as Procera and was sold a lot in Britain, where the name was changed to Procea, until the company was bought by Spillers in the 1970s. Procea was advertised a lot in the 1950s, when the use of a kind of informal script lettering for the brand name became common. This sign is later – the script seems to have got thinner and slightly more refined as the years went on. The name was often accompanied by a slogan, of which there were many. Brown bread was fortified with wheat protein: “The meat of the wheat”. The stuff was so good that it was a case of “Once tasted, never wasted”. “Procea Brown is so much Better it deserves a capital B.” “You never have a stale loaf problem when Procea’s your daily bread.” And so on.
Customers were exhorted to “Buy it where you see the Procea Bakerman”. That’s him, just visible on the side of the window in my picture. There must have been thousands of Bakerman stickers on bakers’ windows in Britain in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Now they are few and far between.
8 comments:
I know this building well. I always liked to muse about what I would do with it if it was mine. I think it belongs to Lambings of Lambings bread. There is a bakers up the other end of the High Street also belongs to Mr Lambings.
I just love Bromyard.
I work literally opposite this shop - the bread sign has gone but the procea one remains. The exterior of the shop has been done up recently under a council funded scheme but the interior is a crumbling shell.
Jane Aston: Glad you like the building. Bromyard is an interesting place with many lovely old shop fronts.
Jane: Many thanks for the local information. Clearly I must return to Bromyard and see what has happened since my last visit. I wonder if other properties have been done up under the same scheme?
Love it, love it. The 'Bread' sign looks as though some long departed baker told the signmaker to 'make it like the Hovis one'. It was probably gilded, but then wiped over with the same brush that did the shop woodwork. And all that stuff about Procea. Lovely. One of those brand names we saw a thousand times and never thought anything about it, let alone buy one of their loaves.
I love those Hovis signs – there are still a few around and I saw one in Brackley when I was there recently.
You are right about the Procea brand, and others of its ilk. They are just there and then one day you see one of these signs and realise that the brand is not there any more and you say to yourself, 'Whatever happened to...?'
Hovis was an abbreviation of 'hominis vis' ('life of man' I think) which is why early signs had a squiggle (a 'tilde') over the 'o' to denote the foreshortening. Film studios once kept Hovis signs in stock as they immediately said 'English High Street'.
It means 'strength of man' (life would be 'vita'). Yes, Hovis was - and is - very English. As borne out in the famous Ridley Scott TV ad filmed in Shaftesbury. (Mind you, the accompanying music is by Czech composer Dvorak, who was influenced by Native American melodies when he wrote it. Funny old world.)
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