The Grand Exhibition of the Society of Sign Painters

This August we’ll be opening a very special sign painting exhibition within the public-facing part of Letterheads 2018: London Calling. It is being curated by Meredith Kasabian of Best Dressed Signs and the Pre-Vinylite Society, and builds on her research into an 18th Century exhibition that happened a short distance away in Covent Garden. We’ve invited Meredith to share some of her research in this guest post to whet the appetite for the forthcoming contemporary interpretation of this historic event…

The 1762 Grand Exhibition of the Society of Sign Painters: A Burlesque of the Times

By Meredith Kasabian

Fig. 1: Announcement for a Grand Exhibition, St. James’s Chronicle or the British Evening Post (London, England), March 13, 1762 – March 16, 1762; Issue 158. Image via 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers.

In the spring of 1762, scores of curious Londoners paid one shilling per admission for the chance to glimpse the new exhibition by London’s fictional Society of Sign Painters. This “Grand Exhibition” (Fig. 1, above) presented the nation with a satirical display of pictorial signboards, some painted specifically for the show (purportedly by William Hogarth, whose streetscape paintings and engravings often featured London’s signs (Figs. 2 and 3, below) and some taken clandestinely from the city streets in the aftermath of a sign ordinance, which required all projecting signs to be removed. The enactment of this city ordinance—along with a desire to mock the concurrent exhibition at the Society of Arts—prompted journalist Bonnell Thornton and his fellow London wits, known as the Nonsense Club, to seek out, take down, and display these pictorial signboards in the world’s first gallery exhibition of hand-painted signs.

Fig. 2: “Beer Street” by William Hogarth, 1751. This engraving by Hogarth is one of a two part series depicting the plague of gin addiction in 18th century London. In this print, Hogarth presents the societal benefits of drinking beer over gin (the companion print, “Gin Lane,” depicts the evils of the popular spirit). The portrayal of the sign painter in this engraving, with his ragged clothing and thin physique, conveys the common assumption that sign painters were a coarse breed.

Fig. 3: “The Times, Plate 1” by William Hogarth, 1762. Published several months after the Society of Sign Painters’ exhibition, this print depicts the city of London in chaos—including its dilapidated signs—to make a political statement about the Seven Years’ War. Though clearly hyperbolic, it’s difficult to imagine that Hogarth was exaggerating much about the signs in this print, as the 1762 Westminster Paving Act required, among other sanitation efforts, the removal of London’s dangerous signboards.