Vitreous enamelled house number plates and signs.
Home is a private place, but it's also a location. A visible house sign tells unexpected visitors, long lost friends and delivery drivers they've come to the right address. In countries like France, where blue or green number plates on every house were once the rule, these did more than pinpoint an address - they gave city streets their special charm. Travellers began looking for them in hardware shops, hoping to bring home their own number and were disappointed when they found none for sale.
THE NUMBERS
We were among those disappointed, and since 1995 Franco-file has worked with enamelling workshops to make these distinctive number plates more widely available. Our collection includes Classic house numbers and larger Signwriter house numbers in the hand-drawn style seen in old quarters of French towns and cities.
HOUSE SIGNS
Regular requests for house names as well encouraged us to offer them and commercial signs too. For these signs, plaques are offered in five standard sizes. If a bespoke sign requires a non-standard size, colour or font this can usually be accommodated. We prepare the graphics and send them to the enamelworks for hand-screen printing. There are many options for individual layout. Plaques can be ordered in blue, green, grey or black enamel, with or without the white border, and in a choice of fonts. We can also meet requests for alternative fonts or match a font sent to us.
OUR ENAMEL
All our signs are vitreous enamelled. Vitreous enamelling on steel is the superior technique. Its components are pigment and molten glass which explains its translucent sheen. This form of enamelling is fired at 750°C, and every stage of the production is labour intensive. Each steel plaque goes through the kiln three times, to fire on the undercoat, the coloured enamel then the numerals, letters and border.
FIXING ADVICE
Fix signs manually, never with an electric drill. The style of screws we suggest for fixing all our plaques are black japanned round head screws which are suitable for wood or masonry.
