Miscellaneous Signs & Displays

One of the more unusual signs in the Museum's collection is this natural gas-powered illuminated sign for Penn Fuel. The 6-ft. wide sign is fabricated from copper and sheet metal and has a row of gas jets inside the can, which illuminate the two glass sign faces. Lamps on either end add to the illumination.

It is not known what era the sign represents, but it is our opinion that the sign is not from turn-of-the-century, but is a promotional effort on the part of the identified business to who the power of natural gas. The sign was donated by Felix and Chris Bartush, Bartush Signs, Orwigsburg, PA.

No sign museum would be complete without a Big Boy fiberglass sculpture, so the local Cincinnati franchise-Frisch's Restaurants, Inc.-donated a 1960s version of this famous American icon. Vice president of marketing, Karen F. Maier, who coordinated the donation, was very enthusiastic about the request, and sent various documentation about the history of Big Boy restaurant signage. The donated sculpture was lovingly restored by Eric Kilb, Steve McGowan and the crew at Glass Hand, Cleves, OH (who incidentally were also responsible for fabricating the pigs that recently populated Cincinnati).

The significance of the Elgin Watch Self-Winding Watch point-of-purchase display is that it incorporates a painted bulletin to display the units promotional text. The three-dimensional p-o-p unit incorporates a plastic vintage car and a driver who appears to turn the auto's crank, which is actually motorized and operates on its own. The display incorporates two racks for displaying watches.

The Holiday Inn sign is actually a scale model of the original "Great Sign," donated to the Museum by the original manufacturer, Cummings, Inc., Nashville, TN. The approximately 4 x 8-ft. sign is a one-of-a-kind display built by Cummings for use by Holiday Inn at tradeshows, grand openings and other public relation events. The sign was featured at the Museum's "Signs on Main Street" prototype unveiled at the International Sign Associaiton's March 2001 Sign Expo in Las Vegas, NV.

The 30-in. tall cast aluminum key is typical of a 1950s semi-production sign for a local locksmith.

The 10-in. diameter, double-faced cardboard sign dates from the 1930s and features an outdoor painted bulletin as a backdrop for the ad copy.

The 30 x 80-in. outdoor board for Roberts Dairy once sat in the lobby of this now defunct southern Indiana business. The scale model is fabricated from a thin composite board material, stretched and wrapped around a plywood frame. The main copy is handcarved and gilded wood letters; the balance of the text is handlettered in gold and outlined in black. The oval pictorial is also handpainted.

Signtags, such as the sampling shown here, are a part of sign history even when detached from the sign they once identified. The examples here date from the 1920s ("R & H Strachan" . . . "We made signs before we could talk") to the 1970s ("Heath").

Whitbread & Company, a British pub sign, is the first international object to be acquired by the Museum and is courtesy of Terry Colley, Bull and Brush, Stockport, England. The cast metal plaque is approximately 10 x 13 in. and was probably manufactured in the 1950s.