Hold The Handrail – TfL's horribly confusing safety posters

I can't be the only one who finds Transport for London's safety posters rather ill-conceived. Their design team seem to have overlooked that many people who use the tube do not have english as first language and might not understand what a handrail is in the first instance. TfL's graphics do not enhance their messages, instead they are confusing.

For instance, it's no good mentioning a handrail in big bold capital letters if the handrail mentioned is not clearly indicated in the image, especially as many people who use the tube networks are visitors and tourists from other countries for whom english is not their fist language.

A depiction of a hand actually holding the handrail might be a nice idea, with the words placed in such a way they they highlight/enhance the handrail in the graphic. I'm also surprised that none of the posters include a pleasantry or an explanation, such as 'For your safety, please hold the handrail'. 

I'll start with the buses – signs like these can be found at the top of the stairs on many routes:

At first glance, it appears to say, HOLD HANDRAIL. Ah, but no, there's a tiny little THE at the end of the stairs, looking like an afterthought. The message might make better sense if the 'designers' had aligned the words with the handrail(s) and, for clarity, added a hand holding the handrail at bottom left. Note the handrail is here depicted in yellow, but on this bus the rails are orange. 

A similar version of this can be found on the underground where the handrail is coloured black as per the moving handrails on escalators yet, but they've painted the side walls blue when, in reality, they are are actually silver colour. 

The handrails in the graphic are barely noticeable at all. The poster seems to be luring us into a golden sunset where a little white 'the' is waiting to take us down a fiery tunnel (to hell?). 

Travelling down the long Elizabeth Line escalators at Farringdon, I spotted this animated version which starts with the world HOLD in roman, then it becomes italicised as HANDRAIL appears across it in white. It wasn't until I looked at these pics that I noticed the word 'the' again hiding in there. 

These signs are bonkers. Someone took the time to design this. And someone else approved it. It beggars belief. 

I think at some point they realised that these posters make scant sense, so someone had the bright idea to link the word HOLD with the visual depiction of the handrail, thus we see a series of posters where the O of hold appears like a ring on a curtain rail as per here on the carriages, though, call me pedantic(!) but I am not sure many of us refer to a vertical pole as a handrail. :

They also created a series of alternative poster designs on this theme, as shown here below at Holborn station. These dispense with the chunky drop shadow letters, as shown above, instead using TfL's Johnston typeface:

These posters depict a mysterious androgynous figure, almost silhouetted at top right, who has speared a big Polo mint and is about to spin it around. Holborn station is slathered in signs of this design – on the platforms, in the tunnels that connect the Central and Piccadilly lines, before the escalators and pasted into the gaps between the escalators, as shown here, viewed from the bottom, the top and mid-journey (ascending):

Heading up towards street level, I struggled to snap the second two pics above. It's almost impossible to read these things as you glide past – you'd need to be at least 8ft tall to be able focus on them, let alone be able to read the content. The message is therefore lost in transit. 

At street-level, on the concourse, three of them are pasted on the wall:

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall during the creative brief for this. I think the design department was first tasked to create the blue poster and, when someone slipped over on a wet floor, they adapted it for the green version and then realised that people with bags are an issue and so the purple poster was made. Somewhere in the middle of all this, the orange Don't Rush version was created.

If you read the smaller text here, you'll see that some of these posters advise us to use the lift which, here at Holborn, is misleading in two respects; 1) you might already be half way up an escalator at this point, and 2) there are no lifts at this station. Or stairs for that matter. 

The purple poster irks me the most and I wonder what message do they think they have conveyed here?  Considering how foreboding this is, what with the colour scheme of black and purple and that shady figure, it looks more like they are telling us to watch out for luggage thieves who might steal our suitcases. Or, perhaps that dark figure is supposed to be you/me, suggesting that we should hold the handrail whilst we slide our luggage ahead of us down the pole?!  Hmm, letting go of the bag is not a good idea and this is why I think another poster was created on this subject (see further down).

Got Luggage? Eurgh!  This kind of short question-heading is everywhere these days and I really don't like it. It requires us to do an upward inflection at the end when we notice the question mark! Add to that, the use of 'got/get' which is lazy and can always be replaced with something better.

On the subject of luggage, this next one is sublime, for all the wrong reasons...

The design style here is quite similar to the one on the buses. However, here, the two words that have been given the most visual emphasis are 'the' and 'too' – leaving the instruction to 'hold the handrail' lost within a red wheelie bag that seems to tell us that we should place our luggage sideways across the footplate, thus blocking up the space for anyone who wants to walk past. It certainly doesn't show us to hold the bag and the handrail which is what they are trying to say here. 

Ah, but, hold on, (see what I did there?!) this wheelie bag seems have made the journey up the escalator all by itself. Note that the handle is depicted as being away from us, suggesting that this is not our bag but the property of some poor soul who has let go of their luggage but is now out of view somewhere on the concourse at the bottom!

As regards the typography on this one, the message to 'hold the handrail' is completely muddled. It's as if someone recalled Katherine Hamnett's T-shirts back in the 1980s but didn't grasp that they work because the largest words in those statements were the ones that were the most important. Instead, here we see HOLD, the most important word, in italics on across the top of the bag, black on red (and vice-versa) being the worst pairing of colours for legibility. Instead, 'the handrail too' in white letters stands out as some kind of cryptic puzzle.

I was going to continue here and address some of TfL's other posters of this type but I think I will save them for another day.

In the meantime, please hold onto your hats and bags and handrails, in anticipation.

TCSU and LBH-EP – bold and brassy additions, but what do they mean

Last Thursday, whilst leading my Notting Hill Ghostsigns walking tour, we happened upon a utility access plate near Portobello Road market, within the pavement outside 294 Westbourne Grove, which has an additional small brass plate screwed to it bearing the letters TSCU. One of the group proclaimed it as a trip hazard, which it surely is, being as it sticks up higher than the main plate and the screws that hold it in place protrude even more so. 

Convinced I'd very recently seen similar elsewhere, perhaps in this vicinity, I took a quick snap for reference and made a mental note to find out more some time in the near future*. 

Well, the future was only two days ahead because, as I exited Hoxton station and turned into Cremer Street, heading south towards, I saw a similar example within the pavement near the gate just beyond the railway line, and another a little further along abutting the wall. I realised I must have spotted one of these the previous Sunday when I rushing to meet friends in Columbia Road market. The pic below is the view looking North along Cremer Street:

The little brass additions here are the same design as the Portobello ones but these bear the letters LBH-EP which is surely must be London Borough of Hackney – Electricity Power, or similar(?). 

Further along Cremer Street, near the southern end, there is another plate bearing the same letters but in a different punched-out stencil design, the rivet fixings on this one being even more sticky-uppy than the others. 

I wonder how many people have actually tripped up on these things? Surely, to avoid this potential hazard, they (thever 'they' are) could have devised something flatter/thinner and instructed the contractors to weld them into the recessed areas of the original cover plates...?  

*I just googled, and I discover that TCSU = Traffic Control Systems Unit. Hmm... strange, seeing as this is about 50metres from the junction where the traffic lights are located.

What's going on at J. Lyons & Co, Throgmorton Street?

Whenever I am wandering around the City of London, I often take a detour into Throgmorton Street to check if anything is happening at the site once occupied by J. Lyons & Co as the Throgmorton Restaurant. This restaurant opened on 15th October 1900 in the basement areas beneath Drapers Hall, and was entered either side of the livery company's main portico, resplendent with large male figures and a huge crest:

On this recent visit (late August 2024), Lyons' door to the left was boarded as seen below, top right, but the door to the right offered more, including a glimpse at the ceiling within the entrance, and there seemed to be activity beyond.

The Long Room, The Grill Room and The Millionaire's Room were accessed via a marble staircase and kitted out in oak, mosaics, etched glass, gilded mirrors and more marble – very similar, I guess, to the opulant dinings rooms at The Café Royal on Regent Street, so beloved of Oscar Wilde, etc. I think this short review from 2006 is about the space that once was The Grill Room when it was a pub/sports bar, this link shows a red interior in 2004 that I think was originally The Long Room, and I deduce is probably the same space reviewed in The Standard in 2012. 

Frustratingly, books written about the Lyons company make no mention of this place. There's nothing in either The First Food Empire by Peter Bird, 2000, or Legacy by Thomas Harding, 2020, with neither indexing Throgmorton, Drapers or City of London. However, the 2000 book does include Throgmorton Restaurant in its appendices where it's in a list of 'other restaurants operated' showing that it was at that time 'still open under new owners'.

How jolly frustrating. How can there be no reference or evidence of this place? No one was taking selfies or pics of their meals pre 2000!

I did see visual evidence myself once, on TV at least 15 years ago. I was watching The Apprentice when I identified this restaurant being used as a task – if my memory serves me well, the candidates were asked to sell off fixtures and fittings from here. I was horrified, especially as they didn't seem to have a clue about the approximate date of the items, let alone the provenance/history. The programme didn't identify the actual location but I recognised it from the snippets they showed of the exterior/street. Note, this was pre the digital channels, without the catch-up and rewind facilities we take for granted today, otherwise I most definitely would have recorded it somehow. Having since tried to check iPlayer and YouTube to find that particular episode I'm finding it to be an uphill struggle – if you also recall this programme please do get in touch in the comments section below or email me via jane@janeslondon.com 

Fingers crossed that there's something good down there simply covered in dust waiting for a savvy and historically-minded entrepreneur to bring it back to its opulent heyday.

Back to the exterior – the metalwork is marvellous and very much of its time. I particularly like the lanterns, the swags, the intertwined flipped Ls on the panels, the cheeky cherubs and the lions used as a rebus for Lyons. Also, the truncation 'Restaunt' which could be interpreted as an invitation to relax and be rude – something Oscar Wilde used to be well known for at The Café Royal!

Also along this section is Pasha's barbershop (the exterior with its hanging sign to the right of the Drapers' doorway can be seen in one of the first pics above). This tiny shop retains some original fittings including the overhead mirrors in the entranceway:

I'll leave it there. I was going to include the some of the other buildings along this street at the eastern end, but I now realise I need to do additional research(!), so I'll save them for another day

The Piccadilly Hotel (today The Dilly) and Cordings – a glitch in the timeline?

I popped into The Dilly to see if there was anything left of what was, over 100 years ago, often described as one of the most impressive hotels in the world. I was on the hunt for any of its original 1908 construction or the 1920s revamp when it became one of London's best Jazz Age venues. Suffice to say, I couldn't find much from either period, but I did uncover an enigma whereby the dates for certain things simply don't make sense. 

This huge central London hotel fills the space bordered by between Piccadilly, Air Street and Regent Street. Its exterior is today slathered in scaffolding. However, many information boards hint at the building's history and the kind of modern facilities that are available inside. 

I wandered into the bland foyer which still retains the three lovely ceiling lights, to my mind at odds with the modern PVC panels and printed info for facilities available on other floors:

The room at the far left of the reception area is today Madhu's of Mayfair, offering Indian cuisine, set within ornately sumptuous surroundings that was originally The Grill Room: 

Note the image bottom right above which is from one of the panels on the exterior of the building. The second photo within that shows a second room with lovely ceiling lights, which I also did not see on this occasion. I'll need to go back again. 

Back in the reception area, there was an unmanned temporary counter advertising 'Downstairs at the Dilly'. I'd also noticed a sign outside depicting an 'exclusive' dance studio, by which I am assuming that it's only residents or members who can use this facility.  

Convinced that one of these spaces would have been the hall used for parties in the 1920s when the Bright Young Things dressed up in tailed suits and beaded dresses and danced the Charleston into the early hours, I headed down the stairs to investigate further but I ended up in a small basement lobby leading to a gym. Hmm. I'll have to check out some floor plans and go back for another try. I'm now recalling that there's an elaborately columned swimming pool down there somewhere too. So I headed to the upper floors via the lovely staircase which, I assume, dates from 1908 when the hotel first opened. Marble, metal and wood in elegant harmony, albeit badly married with some nasty modern carpet. 

On one of the landings there is an old London map etched into metal and lit so strongly that it's hard to see in person, let along photograph it. I've done my best here in an effort to show how bizarre it is that the designers of today's hotel have installed a map that shows this area before the hotel existed yet there is no annotation or explanation on or near it to explain to the uninitiated what they are looking at!

It's actually a very fascinating map and one I am not sure I have seen before. Note Regent Circus for Piccadilly Circus. Judging by the things depicted within it, I'm guessing it's 1870s. 

I took a snap of the layout of one of the floor plans and continued up the stairs to The Terrace, passing through an area festooned with horrid fake plastic flowers (but you can't have a plastic straw with your cocktail, go figure) and a screen advertising the facilities available at the hotel. This includes a bizarre image of a 'bride and groom' entering the ground floor lobby. This repeats along the exterior of the building and I have often shown this image to friends to point at the strange camel toe effect at the front of her dress at thigh level – ugh!  Has the marketing department at The Dilly not heard of photo editing software?! And whilst I'm in picky mode – that TV screen isn't level. 

But the terrace area itself is actually a lovely space with, considering its locality, reasonably priced fare (ooh, careful Jane!). It sits behind the columns that run along along the main facade. Back in the 'Art Deco' era this terrace included an outdoor circular bathing pool, approx 4metres diameter, just like like one of the large collapsible ones you can buy today. I know this because I have photo somewhere of some young women in bathing suits here – when I locate that image it I will add it to this post.

And so to the enigma. It's about the timeline of this building which, doesn't seem to make sense.

Richard Norman Shaw's elegant Palladian/Baroque designs for this hotel are said to have started in 1905/6 with the 300-bedroom building opening in 1908 offering a wide range of additional facilities that included the aforementioned Grill Room, three basement floors for hospitality and entertainment, and four Masonic lodges(!). An illustration of the building is included within the info panels on the outside of The Dilly and within the in-house promotion. 

It comes from an advertisement in the New York Herald dated 1911, three years after the hotel had opened. But look again at that illustration and note that it is a drawing, not a photograph, and the hotel covers the whole block including the corner space, complete with a flag on it. Air Street is shown to be as big and fancy as the Piccadilly side, which is not so, not actually possible. 

I suggest that the hotel never covered this corner section at all because by 1903 that bit was already occupied by Cordings. Indeed, a lovely ribbon-effect 1903 building date stamp can be seen on the first floor above the entrance to Denman House at No.20 Piccadilly. The date is hard to see in my pics here, but trust me it's there:

This leads me to believe that designs for the hotel were started at least six years before it opened and this American newspaper (and possibly others too) simply used a preliminary illustration, no other visual image being available to them at that time. It's hard to believe that nobody took at actual photo, especially as this was such prestigious building. 

UPDATE: This press ad (c1909) backs up my theory as it shows the corner part of this block cropped out of both of the street views:

The Dilly's own history page doesn't offer much more than I have already written above. This piece by Historic Hotels is more comprehensive and includes some excellent images.

To find out more about RE Jones who owned the hotel from 1921, join me for my Southwark Ghostsigns guided walk, often available here.

I see stripes – Portrait Award 2024 at NPG – ends 27th October

Every year I try to see the final cut for the National Portrait Gallery's award. Find out more here. 

On this occasion, I visited with a friend and discovered that we liked a lot of the same paintings, which is interesting because none of our favourites won a prize, these having been awarded pieces that we'd given less than a few seconds of our time. I'm not a fan of photo-realistic art; there are cameras for that!

One thing I did find interesting – many the subjects in this year's paintings are wearing stripey things:

Only ten days left to see this show. Ends on Sunday 27th October.

Coriolanus at The National Theatre – disappointing, overproduced and over-enunciated

I went to Coriolanus at the NT's Olivier Theatre on Monday evening.

This is my view of stage before the play started. 

This stage set is actually the star of the show, almost a total distraction as it goes up and down, transforming from indoor to outdoor environments and also used as a huge screen for live action video projections. 

The design and visuals are excellent, the colour palette, the lighting, the staging and the costumes. But the delivery of play itself, the storytelling, is lacking in many ways. I wonder if they spent too much time and money on the look of the thing, rather than concentrating on how Shakespeare's play might be better understood by the audience who might not already know it so well. 

For instance, most of the 'actors' including Coriolanus himself, played by David Oyelowo, sounded like they were just reciting something at school without making those words come alive. Stiff and static, they stood there, feet rooted to the ground as they ee-nun-see-ate-ed their words in a metro-nome fash-on. Some of them boomed in that 'I am an aKtor!' style. There was a lack of inflection, of humanity, of reality. Most of the characters were therefore two-dimensional and unreal, practically every word spoken at the same level with the same intonation, with random occasional emphasis on a single word making it seem like they'd been told to do that by the drama teacher. However, in contrast, in must be said that the two actors who played the tribunes were excellent, highlighting the difference between acting and just learning words. Surely it's hard to act with/against others who are so wooden and unbelievable, and I wondered if these two actors had noticed or even complained or tried to help with their workmates' inadequate skills. 

And then there's the cost of these productions. People often complain that theatre ticket prices are too high. Well, this production clearly showed where the money is spent – the set, the designer costumes and the tech used in the production are all top of the range and in many cases, IMHO, not even necessary. Oh, and the soundtrack which was often overbearing. Many times I could hardly hear anything being said on stage beneath the loud sound effects emitting from the speakers.

I clearly was not the only disappointed punter as I saw many people grab their coats and leave before the interval. I considered giving up on it myself, but with a niggling FOMO I googled the play to see if it was worth sticking it out and found an excellent review by Arifa Akbar in the Guardian which totally echoes my own observations. 

I decided to stick it out if only to see the costumes in the final scenes and noticed some of the audience laughed in the 'right' places, often before the line was actually finished, in that in that 'oh ha ha, I get it the reference' way. I often wonder if these people are performing arts students studying the play, and it was probably them who whooped and clapped at the end. Me? I sat there stunned, wondering why they were applauding actors for simply remembering so many words. David Oyelowo looked very pleased with himself as he bowed to the audience, lapping up the attention, skipping off stage almost with a whoo-hoo. Creepy. 

Yours, disappointed of Holloway.

A THOUGHT: I've just recalled something else that I noticed... This production has a cast that's approximately 50% dark skinned. However, I would say the audience on Monday was 95% pale skinned. Interesting huh.

And another thing... seat numbers... why oh why can't they place them where we can clearly see them? Here, in the NT's Olivier Theatre, they are embedded into the sides of the padded arm rests which are barely visible in the pic below but it's actually worse when you are there.

Sir George Peabody and Paul Julius Baron Von Reuter – marvellous memorials

I wrote recently about the shops around the exterior of the Royal Exchange and their lovely architectural details. The pedestrianised street that runs along the eastern side offers plenty more to feast your eyes on. Here you'll find gorgeous Victorian street furniture, such as bollards and benches and lamp posts that contain some of the few surviving gas-powered lanterns in the City of London* as well as some K6 phone boxes and, along the buildings on the eastern side facing the exchange building, there are some delightful metalwork panels at low level that depict four hands gripped together – I always think of The Musketeers when I see these; all for one and one for all! 

There are also some excellently-achieved sculptural works to be found here, commemorating two men who had a huge impact on The City and beyond. 

George Peabody was a much loved and well respected businessman and philanthropist. He sits comfortably in his chair staring across Threadneedle Street and, I like to think, into the middle distance, to where the first of his housing estates was constructed in Islington**. Look closely around the base of the plinth to see the names of the people who made this piece:

William Wetmore Story was an American sculptor and Ferdinand von Miller of Munich was also a sculptor in his own right but here he simply casted Story's work as it is not listed as one of his achievements here.   

At the centre of the street, there is different style of memorial created a little over 100 years later. The bust of Paul Julius Reuter has to be one of my favourites in The City due to the mass of justified letterform at lower level echoing the marks at Cornhill.  

Michael Black's informative piece was installed here in 1976. More information and other works here. 

PJBVReuter created the news agency whose Grade II HQ building designed by Lutyens, sits at 85 Fleet Street, currently adjacent to a huge hole where major redevelopment is underway. But I digress...!

*I have yet to finish my coherent history of this form of street lighting (having found that much of the info available is confusing and often contracting in 'fact') – when I finally stop adding and amending to it I will make it live so that I can directt people to it after they attend my walking tours on the subject. 

** Find out more on my 'Look At The Estate We're In' guided walking tour – see here for more

The Cinema Museum, Lambeth – always worth another visit

I wrote about The Cinema Museum after a visit in 2013 and I have been back a few times. Every time I go there I discover something new or get talking to someone who inspires me. 

Last year, in January 2023, I was lucky to be able to sit and chat for a while with its founder Ronald Grant, who set up the archive – an engaging man with lots of stories to tell. I then spent ages perusing all the books and magazines on their extensive shelves (good job I had a carrier bag in my pocket – I came home laden with inspiration).  

The museum's corridors are slathered marvellous exhibits and, of course, with my Art Deco walking tours hat on, I reached for my camera phone. Realising I was about to get snap-happy, I decided to I limited myself to a few shots of the fabulous 'Art Deco' era display boards. These were created by artisan workmen (and women?) using lengths of wooden mouldings sawn and arranged into geometrical patterns, then gilded or hand-painted for better effect. The film posters and info could then be attached/inserted within the decorative frames. Gorgeous:

The next pic below illustrates some hand-painted letterform where the lower case Ts are truncated and 'in' is italicised at a quirky angle with a lovely flick on right leg. Note that the sign writer here is not copying a typeface (or using a font!) – he would, no doubt, have been inspired by type styles of the day, but has implemented his own style and adjustments. The end result is wonderfully human and possibly unique to the artist and/or this venue. Note also, the oddly stretched letters (compare those two As!), hints of kicks/serifs on some letters and the slightly off-kilter centred alignment.  

There are also mechanical elements on display such as sliding sections to indicate which seats were available, see above right. Such a simple process. These days we'd be standing there checking an app.

I visited the museum again in June 2024. After Martin's presentation about the fascinating story of the archive and the museum, we were treated a wonderful showreel of old movie clips, silent movies and cartoons, ranging from slapstick to pathos, from romance to daredevil stunts. It included some early Tom and Jerry cartoons and it was amazing to revisit the extreme hurt that Fred Quimby's cat and mouse inflicted on each other, something that I am sure is not allowed today, even within animations. T&J were teatime viewing when I was a child – dastardly deeds and vicious feuds between the protagonists, such as burned body parts, stepping on garden rakes, tails caught in machinery, electric shocks, etc, and back then I thought this was simply amusing, or dull. This time I laughed and shrieked with a mix shock and awe. I'm sure if we were to play these cartoons to the under-10s of today they'd be horrified, and their mothers would be writing complaints on social media. 

The next pics are the ones I took this year. The first pic shows a collection of four panels that were used to insert stills of the movies being shown. On close inspection, I noticed that the board at the top left had a maker's label on it showing it was made by Classic Displays of 3 Islington High Street (recently converted to The Peacock pub). This link shows that in 1947 the company specialised in decorative and modern window treatments and, in particular, their Tessor Pelmet (an example here). Their ad on p45 of the 1945 Kinematic Yearbook offers "The Publicity Service Display that is Effective, Economical, Descriptive and Artistic"

And here are some pics of lovely lettering and brushwork within some of the old cinema display boards:

Some of the panels display photos of the stars of the day. Someone in the retouching department appears to have been rather heavy-handed with Gary Cooper. Check out his overly-enhanced eyebrows and lashes, his sculpted features and what looks like new set of ill-fitting overly-white veneers! All of these bizarre 'enhancements' are popular today. Perhaps the retoucher was extremely forward-thinking?! 

I urge you to visit this museum – Some Saturdays are drop-ins, and your ticket includes tea and biscuits (a bar is also available) a talk and a a short collection of movies – more info here where you'll find out about the crowd funding drive to keep this marvellous asset alive.