Of every brand we reproduce, Shell appears most often. That is not an accident of our buying: the company put a great deal of advertising onto South African forecourts and garage walls, in English and in Afrikaans, and a lot of it was well designed.
The emblem does the heavy lifting
The scallop shell is one of those marks that reads instantly from across a room, which makes it useful décor rather than merely a logo. Several of our pieces are built around it at different scales, from the emblem filling the whole board to versions where it sits alongside lettering.
More than one kind of Shell sign
Browsing our Shell collection, the artwork falls into a few groups worth knowing about:
- Motor spirit boards, the straightforward forecourt advertising.
- Shell-Mex and Shell & Crown, which pair the shell with other marks and tend to be busier, more interesting pieces up close.
- Aviation artwork, with aircraft and airships, which suits a study or an office better than a workshop.
- Afrikaans advertising, such as Shell Trekkrag and Shell Voortrekkers, which you will not see reproduced often.
Where to hang it
The bold forecourt pieces earn their keep in a garage or workshop, where you look at them from a few metres away. The detailed artwork, the aviation scenes and the illustrated advertisements, rewards a closer view, so put those somewhere people stand still: a passage, a study, beside a desk.
What these are
Every piece is a vintage-style reproduction, UV-printed onto Chromadek board and ready to hang. They are made for display and they are not original enamel signs. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by any brand we reproduce.
Building it out
Shell sits inside our wider petroliana collection, and pairs naturally with tyre advertising. The garage and workshop décor guide covers how to arrange a wall of it.