Golden Quill Sign

Designed for Renegade Nell. A hanging shop sign for a printing office. It incorporporates a golden quill piercing a scroll, encircled by a wooden band. This sign was hung in Fleet Street outside the printing offices of Lady Eularia Moggerhanger and reflects both her trade as a journalist and a blazon from her family's coat of arms (Murrey, an ostritch feather or transfixing an escroll fesswise between four estoils or). Hand carved with custom ironmongery.

Until the 19th-centry, shop signs, often carved from wood or made from iron, adorned many English streets. They acted as indicators of the type of trade being carried out, or the goods being sold within the premises. Signs also allowed businesses and private houses to be identified in a large city such as London. This was particularly necessary before the introduction of building numbering in the 19th century and in a time where illiteracy was still widespread.