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Fish Store Sign
From the collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
In the mid- to late nineteenth century, craftsmen carved signs for a wide variety of businesses. These large, easily recognizable symbols guided people to the service or product needed, from the mortar and pestle of the druggist to the shoe of the cobbler and the fish of the fishmonger. This visual language of figures and objects was especially useful to the large numbers of immigrants, many of whom could not speak English.
Smithsonian American Art Museum’s own descriptionCredit lineFish Store Sign. ca. 1850-1890. Unidentified. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson. CC0.
