Derby

Morning coffee

I've watched with interest the various initiatives over the last few years to record and appreciate the ghost signs that can still be found in many towns and cities. The way they recall lost businesses and forgotten brands is one reason for my interest; their decorative qualities, whether plain or fancy, are another; the window they open on to the advertising techniques of the past is a third.

This example, fading steadily away on the gable end of a building in central Derby, is actually very plain. But even a sign like this has visual qualities one can admire – its simple lettering and the way in which some of the letters follow precisely the height of a single brick, so that the sign seems to go 'with' the brickwork rather than against it. I'm impressed that a sign-writer took such trouble – and the sign's large size must have meant that he took a considerable amount of time on it too.

The brand the sign advertises, Lever's Morning Glory Coffee, is wonderfully named but presumably long gone. I have come across a reference to the same company selling tea, but I don't know whether they were tea and coffee merchants or retail grocers. Their sign, however, with its enticing slogan, 'Tastes as good as it smells', is still worth a second look.

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Some other ghost signs I've posted over the years:
Landaus and wagonettes
Beer bottlers
Dinner services, photographic film

Page Street, London

Full English

Before I leave Page Street, here’s the other building I noticed as I made way to Tate Britain. The Regency Cafe (‘established 1946’) still has the black tiles and white lettering that must have gone up just after the end of the Second World War. It smacks a little of the ‘back end of Art Deco’ that cafe designers liked to use at around that time, but looks forward too to the clean modern lines of the 1950s. Just the thing, in fact, to represent the mix of post-war optimism, Italian flair, down-to-earth food, and good coffee that made the English ‘caff’ what it once was and, occasionally, still is.

Inside this resilient survivor there’s some original wall tiling to set off some classic posters, plus a lot of later formica-topped tables and plastic chairs. We’re in archetypal cafe territory, in other words: a lived-in place that looks as if it’s been delivering a hearty breakfast and decent coffee since the time when muffins were always toasted and barristas stood up in court not behind counters. I hope when next I’m passing I’ll have time to go in and try the place for myself.