ON / OFF
SANDRA NOBRE
Words
ADRIANO FAGUNDES
Photography
Colourful lights wink at passers-by in Lisbon’s streets and alleyways. With enticing words and artistic features these signs of yesteryear are disappearing by the day, with the onslaught of building works that erase memories and the dust of another time, forever lost. Faced with this scenario , designers Rita Múrias and Paulo Barata began collecting old shop signs that were in danger of being trashed. Ten years later, they have over 400 from around 250 establishments, most of which have closed down or changed their image. Paulo Barata knows the importance of their endeavour: “You can tell the history of the city this way, not only through the shops, but also in relation to the street and neighbourhood where they were located”. They may look the same, but neons are only red. The blues are argon and all the other colours are the result of fluorescent powders with pigment that combusts with the gas to produce the right colour. This is pure alchemy inside a glass tube, shaped by the blowtorch.
Paulo and Rita find the process enchanting, sometimes emotional, namely because there are so many stories, so many lives dedicated to businesses that have seen the lights go out for the very last time. Ever-attentive to the local news, they keep their ear to the ground, contacting owners, recovering what’s left behind.
“We removed the sign from the Suiça pastry shop [in Lisbon’s Rossio square] the day it closed and the staff photographed the moment, while someone painted the windows white, marking the end. It was sad, beautiful, poetic”, recalls Rita Múrias. And there are family ties that went beyond the noise of the lights. “Costa was a hairdresser’s, whose proprietor [Senhor Costa] asked that the sign be left to us before he died, or Machado Oculista [optician], where we keep in touch with the granddaughters”.
The history of design and advertising can be retraced - glass from the 1920s, metal signs from the 1930s with Art Deco or Art Nouveau lettering -, some of which were created by illustrious figures, such as Porfírio Pardal Monteiro (Ritz Hotel), Cristino da Silva (Diário de Notícias newspaper) and Raúl Tojal (Contente shoe shop and A Elite). Society acquired new routines and certain practices and objects became obsolete. You can’t fix pens anymore. Who wants typewriters, and calculators? What do Ivo Mendonça, Francisco Silva & Silva, João Cândido da Silva, Marques Sequeira, Hélio, Machado and Camila do, after all? Imagination lacking, the first or family name gave businesses an identity, sometimes a play on words - Jelu, a combination of José and Lucília, or Gracidini, from Graça and Diniz.
And a popular marketing strategy that has never fallen into disuse, the foreignisms that came in light boxes. From the snooker [pool], shopping, hairdresser, self-service, nightclub, the Texas launderette to (and this is the cherry on the Hollywood-style cake) the Ritz hotel. Once upon a time America arrived through songs and films. Letter by letter, advert by advert, it takes skill to save what’s left, delicate gestures and a lack of vertigo. You have to transport huge items that old businesses carry. It takes space to store this memory.
The Letreiro Galeria project waits for someone who shares Rita Múrias and Paulo Barata’s belief that illuminated signs are valuable cultural heritage that should never be switched off for good.
