Signs of Age

To my eye the weathering of our urban world adds a lot of character, and where I live in Thailand road signs are one of the most obvious places to find it. Here is a collection of weathered patterns on signs from around the roads of my local town.

I love how this old sign for a defunct coffee shop has become rust stained in such an artistic way that adds to the sense of "coffee", almost like it was deliberately sprayed with coffee granules.

Much of the time weathering doesn't actually detract from the original purpose of the sign as it can still be read, but in this case the heavy weathering of this sign had made the map that lies underneath almost impossible to decifer. It actually took me a while to realise that I was looking at a map.

This circle was part of a sign outside a school but it didn't make any sense to me so I just took this detail and left. It was quite old so perhaps something was missing.

A motorcycle parking sign weathered into a slightly abstract artwork.

Another strange one that didn't make sense to me. It's definitely a chair but it's painted on a fence with no obvious reason for it. Either the original context has been lost or perhaps a young art student was using graffiti to practice perspective.

I think this is a no parking sign.

Part of a design outside an old shop that I think looks better now it's got a bit of weathering.

Road-signs around here do tend to crack up beautifully. I keep finding new ones that I covet. Unfortunately, it was a bit too high (or I am a bit too short) for a good photo.

Another arrow road-sign in an uncommon colour with some quite intense cracking. This is a good example of how it's not just the weathered cracks that make it interesting but also the way the originally uniform colours fade into a range of tones.

This arrow is an unusual example of the sign actually being clearer thanks to the weathering which has revealed more of the blue colour underneath.

A detail of a sign arrow as a delicate thorn that will probably soon just be a rusty mark.

Finally, a weathered arrow on wood, a surface where the paintwork flakes away more than cracks (although that might actually just be the same thing!).