Huile Bugatti Enamel Sign, Blue

Bugatti built its cars at Molsheim, in Alsace, not far from Strasbourg, and the enamel works of Strasbourg were close at hand for the signs that marked its garages and agents. This one advertises oil sold under the Bugatti name. HUILE BUGATTI fills the lower two thirds in tall white capitals, outlined in red and shadowed in black, and above it sits the Bugatti oval: the EB monogram and the name in white on red, inside a border of red dots. Signs like this were made to be screwed to a workshop wall and left there, and they show it.

It is an original sign from about 1920, a flat rectangular plate of pressed metal in deep blue enamel, 48 by 68 cm, framed by a white keyline and pierced at each corner for fixing. The wear is real and visible: chips around the edges and the fixing holes, fine crazing and pitting across the blue, and a broad patch of lost enamel across the lower half of the oval, where the bare metal beneath has rusted brown. The big lettering has come through largely intact. In the lower left corner, in small capitals, is the enameller's mark of Emaillerie Alsacienne, Strasbourg.