'Hampstead's nameplates are made of tiled letters, generally embedded into walls...so that they become integral to their environment – part of the very fabric of the area...Fortunately the council, encouraged by local historians and residents' associations, is making attempts to maintain and even recreate the signs.' This is the 1905 Minton catalogue. When lockdown is over we thoroughly recommend a Hampstead street sign walk, the signs really are a thing of beauty. Come out of the tube, turn right and on the second corner  you will rind a postbox in the wall and Elm Row NW3 leading to Hampstead Sq and Church underneath. This sign has particular sentimental value as Jim Ede lived in Elm Row before he moved to Kettle's Yard and this will have been his local postbox – and sign. Its beauty and simplicity and friendly tone probably influenced his house at Kettle's Yard.

Spread throughout Hackney there are signs that are remnants from a no-longer-existent London postal district. It was Anthony Trollope in fact who deemed the NE  district unnecessary in 1866 – having just E was cheaper. The argument about NE versus E went on until 1917 when NE was finally killed off. There are apparently 58 NE signs that survive.

'Cast metal nameplates, particularly cast iron ones, have a solidity, heft and permanence about them. Partly this is intrinsic – they are solid and heavy – but it also comes from our understanding of their industrial roots. They can be beguilingly ornate or brutishly simple.' (Very well put – one looks at things in two ways, seeing the obvious thing but also sensing the background/the heritage/the unspoken.) This Woodside Lane, Finchley sign features 'leading to' information and a delicate leaf decoration at each end..

Blue Enamel Nameplates are rare but glorious, surprisingly quite a few have survived.  Railway Cottages were built in 1889 by the London and North Western Railway for its employees. It's nice that the modern, reddish bricks (it's a pity they couldn't find old stock to match) shows that at least someone made the effort to preserve the sign.

Something very niche on the Persephone Post this week: London Street Signs, based on the book by Alistair Hall. His twenty-five chapters have topics such as  Milk-glass Nameplates, Wooden Nameplates, Northwood Revival Nameplates, Applied Lettering etc etc. Street signs are important because they add to the streetscape aesthetically, or detract. And for anyone interested in books and publishing, the typeface is always something to notice. We start with   a street sign hero, David Kindersley, who noticed in 1947 'the unique and characterful cast-iron street names being removed from the centre of Cambridge'. Luckily the City Engineer promptly put back the cast-iron signs (one is tempted to put three exclamation marks after that remark) and David Kindersley was asked to design lettering specifically for street signs. Nowadays the Royal Borough of Kensington  is the main user of Kindersley in London. Although, as Alistair Hall points out, 'the layout is quite uncomfortable with the borough name set in Gothic lettering, taking undue prominence.' We have chosen the Allen Street sign  because this is the street lived in by Mollie Panter-Downes's daughter and every February (this week in fact) we send her royalty cheque there!

This is a 1929 wood engraving by Eric Ravilious – although of course anyone who has read Long Live Great Bardfield would wonder if this was actually done by Tirzah helping him out. It's called Libra and was done for an Almanack that was in the end never printed. 

A few lucky people have a potter's wheel and a kiln at home and we wish we were among that select group: there is something fascinatingly satisfying about 'throwing' a pot. Here is a 1952 photograph in the V & A collection: Potter at Work at Wedgwood. The photograph is by the marvellous Elsbeth Juda (1911-2014).