This was the first enamel sign for what was to become quite a col­lec­tion of them. In 1967 we – my then.wife, Joan and myself – saw it some­where in the South of France, next to the door of a news­pa­per shop. While I parked our 2CV and, using my scrappy French, tried to divert the atten­tion of the old men who were sit­ting on a bench out­side, Joan was busy right next to us. When we were back in the car a few min­utes later, I asked her why she had been back so quickly and whether we shouldn’t offer money to buy the sign after all. I had not noticed that she had already dealt with the mat­ter by sim­ply stick­ing the sign under her short dress. It hadn’t been screwed to the wall but was sim­ply lean­ing against it. Obvi­ously as a sign for us to take it and pre­vent it from being thrown away the next time they painted the house. This is what hap­pened to most enamel signs in those days.

This did not start us on a career as petty thieves, but in ret­ro­spect could have been the first activ­ity that even­tu­ally led to us found­ing FontShop 20 years later. The lib­er­a­tion of this sign was our first typo­graphic misdeed.