The house with a whale...


In an age when streets were not numbered, houses were described by gable stones or their specific architecture. Trade signs became one way of achieving recognition. Talented tinsmiths competed to fashion artistic trade signs and three-dimensional images of animals and other subjects for which houses were named. These expert reproductions, hand made in tole, hand painted and distressed, might as well be the originals once adorning the front of a harbor side fishmonger, the godown storing baleen and whale-oil, a tavern serving fresh seafood.

These trade signs are hammered into shape on a wood mold, an exact and time consuming affair. For this reason, their availability is limited and it sometimes takes us some extra leadtime to deliver them. All of our trade signs are two sided.