My World of Tile vintage sign-painted sign

I made three trips down to World of Tile during their liquidation sale. In the wake of this once-in-a-lifetime, bittersweet adventure, I was so exhausted that I never did write about all my loot. My favorite purchase: Seven (and there were 12 in all, read on!) great big, never-used vintage signs — all hand-painted by sign painters from back in the day. I recently had one of the signs framed, and I hung it up in my mudroom. The photos don’t do it justice, but here’s a try.

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So how often do you get to write: “I styled the mud room yesterday”?

Above: The muddy coral colored chairs are vintage, nabbed out of an estate sale years ago. They are very comfortable and fit the space perfectly. As you can see, the sign coordinates the two principal colors in the room — the aqua of my Geneva kitchen cabinets and the coral of the seats — perfectly. Also, In all the years the mudroom has been in place (we carved it out when we renovated the kitchen about 10 years ago), I have never had any art hanging in that spot. Voila! The Retro Decorating Gods delivered this gift unto me.

The chrome canister next to the mudroom seating holds Astro’s food. The vintage rag rug is estate sale loot, too. 

Above: Hard to see exactly, but the frame is a simple L-shaped piece of molding that sits around the sign — the picture molding is wide enough that you can create a gap between the edge of the art and the start of edge piece of the sign. This is one of my favorite framing solutions for textural art. The sign has been laminated onto thick black board. There is no glass — we wanted to see the texture of the hand-painting. The friendly team at Miller’s Art Supply in Pittsfield, Mass., did the framing. I love them. It was a little under $200.

Above: I recently found this Lagardo Tackett whale cookie jar at Finder’s Keepers, a wonderful little vintage store in Lee, Mass. If you’re nearby — even, driving along the Massachusetts Turnpike, it’s five minutes off Exit 2 — be sure to stop in. Have lunch across the street at The Starving Artist Cafe. Or, if it’s dinner time, the lasagna at Timothy’s is wicked awesome.

I keep Astro’s doggie treats in the Lagardo Tackett cookie jar. The jar makes me very happy, while the cookies makes him very happy. Dear Husband love the World of Tile sign. Everybody’s happy!

Above: Even the boots are vintage. You can find everything at estate sales!

The story of these wonderful signs

Yes: There were 12 of these signs! Over the course of my three visits to World of Tile, I probably spent… 20 hours… going through all the rooms — an estimated 100,000 mostly underground feet of them (!) — multiple times, poking into every corner, nook, cranny, and even the rafters some times, too. During my second visit (I think it was), I met up with my friend Brie Dyas. She is a mega-fan o’ the vintage, so I had tipped her off to the sale, and she went multiple times, too.

She and I were poking around a small, sort of hidden room full of lots of stationery supplies. Way up top of one shelf she spied something long and flat wrapped in kraft paper — it was almost invisible because the color of the kraft paper was the same color as the wood shelf. I hiked up, pulled down the stuff that was sitting on the bundle and handed it to her to move away, and then carefully brought the big package down.

We peeled back the kraft paper … and both had the wind knocked out of us. Pristine World of Tile hand-painted by sign painters signs! We bought them, of course, and split the stash between us. I accidentally got seven, while Brie has five. I may be up for selling the rest of mine, but shipping will be a PITA, since they are fragile — the substrate is some sort of heavy posterboard and the front will dent and rip and stain easily if not handled with care. In fact, on my seven signs, none of the fronts is “perfect”, there are scratches and what not. But you know me: I love me my patina, the imperfections are what make for the perfect!

I scored many other bits of advertising ephemera from the World of Tile sale. In addition, the images above were in a small four-panel brochure that Ben Sander aka Brini Maxwell found a hand full, nabbed and mailed. I was so excited about them that on his next trip to WOT, Ben nabbed me a big box full! Thank you B aka B — that was SO KIND of you! As you can see from the scanned closeups I made from the brochure, World of Tile was giving the sign painters lots of business back in the day. Oh, to have seen it in its prime. Give me a time machine — this place, circa 1960 — will be on my list!