Re: The Temple of Fashion in Central City, Colorado

Posted by Dave Eggleston on Oct 10, 2024; 11:34pm
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/The-Temple-of-Fashion-in-Central-City-Colorado-tp20177p20198.html

This is an interesting question. To do this sign plausibly will mean getting educated on period practice in 1870s Colorado and not trusting what you think you see in the photos.

We know only one color on this wall with some chance of accuracy: the unpainted brick.

Unless the original billboard is sitting under whatever is on that wall today--and that seems unlikely (?)--we will NEVER know what the sign colors were because we have no idea what emulsion was used on the tiny number of photos of the TofF taken in the mid-1870s. Different emulsions are blind to different colors.

Start by reading up on emulsions (start here: https://www.pacificng.com/template.php?page=/ref/color/index.php) and then keep hunting. Jim Wilke broke a lot of mythology decades ago, Randy Hees and Andrew Bandon are doing the same recently and there is a ton of conversation amongst some young historians who are actively collecting period paint chip books and shattering perceptions.

The backing could be white but it could be yellow (think of the recent waycar paint discoveries), light green (think of the recent Tiffany reefer discoveries) or even light blue (think of all those white skies seen in glass plate photos). Heck, I've seen images of the GSL&P Sunset station and realized it was 2-tone in the late '80s but the emulsion's blindness almost hides this.

As to the dark lettering, I'd lean to a red, deep brown, burnt ochre...or black. But then maybe a deep purple or green?

And then there's weathering, the light that day...gah, a lot of things mess things up. And those bloody Victorians had color sensibility unlike ours. Lots of traps.

Seek out examples of mid-1870s Colorado signs in collections, signs that haven't been touched, ever. There are period books written by sign painters on sign painting. Check out google books. Possibly oil paintings of streets painted in this area at that time. Yes, it's finding a needle in a mound of hay. If you're to do it right, it'll take a lot of effort and cross-checking.

The fact is, if you had a color photo from the 1870s I'd still question the actual colors--not the hue (red, blue, yellow, etc) but the specifics of color (is it saturated/desaturated, weathered, warm/cool).

However you paint it most people won't have a clue on your color choices but those in the know will. And we'd all argue that if you can't truly hit the actual colors it was, at least stick as close as possible to solid research on sign painting for that time and place.