Fragmentary Early-Victorian Painted Pine Drapers & Undertakers Sign C.1850-60

The irregularly rectangular shaped sign written draper and undertaker premises sign of good size, in gold leaf brush lettering on wide pine boards, reading “Wooilen (sic) drapery…Funerals furnished…shrouds ready made… sold by Sam(l) Griffith” to a stained ground and surviving from the third quarter of the nineteenth century.

There is some small amount of chipping and wear to the paintwork, which gives the sign a decorative appeal with no cracks or losses. It was obviously once part of a larger composition.

For as long as human beings have cared for their dead, there have been funeral directors. The ancient Egyptians were possibly the first society to support full-time funeral directors with specialist priests spending up to 70 days preparing deceased royalty and nobility for the afterlife. The name change from undertakers to morticians was first proposed in 1895 in The Embalmers’ Monthly, a funeral business trade magazine. It sounded more user-friendly and it distanced itself from the business at hand, which was death.

The exaggerated curl at the top of the letter D and return sweep of the Y is typical of Victorian signwriting flourishes, especially in the second half of the 19th century. The abbreviation Sam’l for Samuel was also very common in that period, especially on signage where space was at a premium. The combination of Roman capitals (WOOLLEN DRAPERY) with an italic script (furnish’d, sold by) was a popular Victorian aesthetic, both for visual variety and to emphasise different aspects of the message, whilst the wording WOOLLEN DRAPERY and FUNERALS furnish’d points to the era when drapers often acted as undertakers, very common in Britain during the mid-to-late 1800s.

A very decorative fragment that would work well bunched with other art.