A blast from the past: Vintage sign shop photos

If you’re like us here at SignCraft, a photo of a sign shop or a sign painter at work from years ago always gets a second look. Chris Dobell, Dobell Signs, Victoria, B.C., Canada, began collecting such photos a few years ago. He started sharing them on Instagram, and the collection has been added to by fellow sign artists.

Shopfronts of sign shops, sign painters at work, sign shop trucks, satisfied customers with their new signs—you’ll find all these and more at two Instagram accounts that Chris has used to share them: @vintagesignpics and @vintagesignflicks.

“I’ve never been much of a collector,” says Chris, “but a few years ago I started seeing old photos of sign shops and sign painters that Sean Starr and Tom Collins and a handful of other sign painters were posting on Instagram. I started thinking that there must have been sign shops in the Gold Rush towns in the late 1890s. As the railroad made its way across the country, towns sprang up and there must have been sign painters there.”