Have you ever walked down a street in Dublin and noticed that a shop had disappeared seemingly overnight and another one opened up in its place? That’s exactly what prompted Emma Clarke to set up Dublin Ghost Signs.
Emma has been photographing old signs & tracking Dublin’s changing streetscapes for almost as long as she has been living in Dublin (she moved there from Cork, via Spain, in 2008).
She started dublinghostsigns.com in 2013.
Typically, Ghost Signs are the remains of advertising signs which were hand-painted into the brickwork of buildings.
A thread which ran from 2009 to 2012 on boards.ie collected images of Dublin’s Ghost Signs, not only the hand-painted advertising, but also the remains of signage of companies which have since gone out of business. Their signs often remain.
There are many Ghost Signs enthusiasts who focus specifically on hand-painted signs. The most comprehensive collection is http://www.ghostsigns.co.uk/, a collection of over 500 posts, created by Sam Roberts.
This Dublin Ghost Signs blog features a number of Dublin’s traditional hand-painted signs, but as it is inspired by the boards.ie thread, it also features signs for businesses which no longer operate. Find all the traditional ghost signs at this link, or just browse the site to see a part of Dublin’s history through its signs.
If you know of any ghost signs which you think should be included here, please email info [at] dublinghostsigns [dot] com or via one of the methods on the contact page.
Certain decisions are made when deciding whether a sign belongs to Dublin Ghost Signs or not. To read more about the decisions we make, please read this post.
Sometimes, people say or write things about Dublin Ghost Signs. To read these, please click here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.