Running concurrently with Sensory Systems, the Grundy is exhibiting images of original designs for 1930s neon Illuminations, taken from Blackpool’s unique and historic archive of working drawings, which extends across the Twentieth Century. The town was one of the first places after Paris and New York to widely display neon, a radical new technology at the time, from the 1920s and ’30s.
A brief history of Neon and Blackpool
It was over a century ago in 1911 that French inventor Georges Claude patented his system of illuminating gas in a glass tube, following a successful display in the Paris motor show. It was a highly appropriate new technology – powered by two electrodes the new form of lighting with was akin to a car ignition made visible, echoing the style and speed of the Modern motorcar in the glamorous era of Art Deco.
Through shaping the glass it became possible to sculpt light into searing letters and line drawings. People seeing this for first time were transfixed. When Claude’s company first displayed neon in America in 1923, it marked the site of a Packard car dealership in automobile-addicted Los Angeles, where it is said to have stopped traffic.
It was not long before neon was adorning the streets of New York, and in particular on Broadway. No longer “the Great White Way” lit up by streetlamps alone, the street was now dubbed “the Rainbow Ravine” by journalist Meyer Berger upon seeing the proliferation of colour.
Visiting the Big Apple in the ’20s, author GK Chesterton felt that the new technology was sacrilegious, harnessing “the two most vivid and most mystical gifts of God, colour and fire” but using them to sell “everything from pork to pianos”.
Following Paris, Los Angeles and New York, Blackpool was amongst the first places, certainly in the UK, to widely use the technology and commissioned Claude to undertake designs especially for the town. The originals are too delicate to display here, so what you see are reproductions, but the quality of the designs and their ability to convey the distinct glow and aura of neon remains as vivid as the technology itself.
Please note: Blackpool Illuminations Archive exhibition is on display in the Grundy’s Rotunda Gallery space, located on the first floor and only accessible by stairs. Grundy apologises for any inconvenience this may cause.