Glass signs of Porto

[Ash Bishop]

On the recomendation of fellow letterhead Alan Brindle, my family and I decided to visit Porto, Potugal to check out it's great shopfronts and prolific glass signage.

Located along the Douro river estuary in northern Portugal, Porto is one of the oldest European centres, and registered as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996. Its settlement dates back centuries, when it was an outpost of the Roman Empire. In the 18th and 19th century Porto began to flourish with the wealth generated from the port wine industry.Port is produced from grapes grown and processed in the demarcated Douro region. The wine produced is then fortified by the addition of a neutral grape spirit known as aguardente in order to stop the fermentation, leaving residual sugar in the wine, and to boost the alcohol content. This wealth was displayed by fantastic architecture, for instance the Palácio da Bolsa will astound all letterheads with gold leaf, carving, woodgraining etc.

The city is rich in 19th century shopfront, elaboratley decorated with sumptuous mouldings, carvings and gold leaf. There are also many examples of glass signs still in existance. Unusually many are mirrored with silver nitrate as opposed to gold leaf and from what I could tell this tradition has continued untill recent times. Many city professionals such as doctors and dentists have small glass signs mirrored in a utalitarian style of lettering rather than having brass plaques like we would in the UK.

If you find yourself in Portugal it's well worth a visit and the wines great to.

[Anthony Bennett]

Hi Ash, did you get any pictures please?

[Ash Bishop]

sorry have been trying to work out how to upload photos!

[Ash Bishop]

And some more now Dave Smith told me how to upload photos. Thanks Smiffy

[Anthony Bennett]

Nice

[Pat Welter]

These are awesome Ash...But is dishearting to see the amount of tagging we see there as well.

[DAVE SMITH]

Interesting styles Ash , glad it worked! and thanks for dinner....
Dave

[Danny Baronian]

Hi Ashley,

nice photos. Interesting to see how well those have held up.

I'm curious, in photo 64 there's a mother, daughter in pink pants, and a boy sitting on the curb. Is that your family?

If it is, it needs no caption, as we've all heard it too many times before: Smile for dad; is he taking pictures of us or the signs? We're on holiday, why's he taking pictures of signs all the time?

Would love to see the storefront to the right of the Bohlo Cafe.

Now that you've got photo uploading down, post some more.

Thanks for sharing!

Danny

[Ash Bishop]

Thanks for the response guys, Pat there is a lot of tagging which is so unsightly but who knows in 100 years perhaps people will be posting pictures of the "wonderful vintage lettering" of Porto tagging!

Danny you have obviously used the same ruse for your family... oh lets have a lovely family photo why don't you stand there in front of that shop dearest.....

I,ve found a few photos of the shop you mentioned together with some great script and a really interesting glass hanging sign very similar to those produced by Brilliant Signs.

[Ash Bishop]

Sorry duplicated the wrong photos, try this

[BruceJackson]

love it, love it, love it.....it's interesting, and not really surprising, to see the similarity with some of the transom glass signs elsewhere in Europe, especially France.

Some great examples of period lettering styles.

Would love to know what was in the right-side panel of the "Casa de S.Jose". There's only a remnant of the border. flaked and crumpled inside the frame now, but I think there must have been a feature picture in there at one time. Maybe one of those soft-focus images of Jesus with the glowing sacred heart.

[Ash Bishop]

Hi Bruce,

The panel did have the remenants of a pictorial of Jesus on it, you could just see parts of it clinging on and some ghosting (or should that be holy ghosting) of other parts of the image. I may have another photo of that part if so I'll post it

Thanks
Ash

[Doug Bernhardt]

Hi Ash. Sorry we missed last visit for me but did get a peek into your shop while you were out. It's also worth mentioning Smitty and I saw some terrific work going on there! Maybe we could talk you into showing some of it off here for us!?! Great photos and Sarah and the kids look well and can't believe how much they've grown...I guess that's what happens to children huh?

[Ash Bishop]

Hi Doug,
Thanks for the kind remarks, it means something indeed coming from you. I'm sorry to have missed you too, but I hope to see you at your workshop in August.

I'll post some pictures soon, I'll start with the 3000 hour restoration project of a 1902 gypsy caravan that I wanted to show you, hopefully post this over the weekend.

You're right about the kids, blink and you miss a year!

[Doug Bernhardt]

Coming my way? This will be a treat....a chance to return some of the hospitality you've shown me. You'll have to ask Smitty about my B+B+Q+ing ability. Davey told me about that caravan and said it was outstanding.... would love to see it.