Update: Check out the sign today: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2014/may/john-tanns-ghost-sign-hackney

One of my favourite pieces of old advertising is found on this house at the end of a small Georgian terrace at Hackney Road and Treadway Street in London which became the home of John Tann Ltd. in 1814. The sign was done in about 1890.

Like many Georgian houses built on what would become busy roads, this was converted to commercial use. Apart from the wonderful wall sign, there’s a fragment of painted advertisement ‘to all responsible persons’ and a clock from its former business life.

The house is under renovation and presumably the picturesque decay will be tidied up, which would be too bad.

There’s a good history of the long-lived firm here.