Last Sunday before we picked up my grand-ma to go to the restaurant, we quickly stopped at the market held on the Avenue Gambetta in Saintes, a lovely city on the River Charente renowned for its Gallo-Roman monuments, its Romanesque and Gothic cathedral and churches, as well as its medieval, Renaissance and classical civil architecture. While my mum and girlfriend started shopping and my dad parked the car, I went to take some pictures of two painted signs I had spotted earlier. Actually within the next eleven minutes I came across not two but ten signs. Nearly one sign per minute. Not bad at all!
The harvest began with a sign I had seen countless times as it is on the road to my grand-ma's but never photographed. It is for Dubonnet, a famous aperitif that has left its mark on countless walls throughout France.
This gable is well located, on one of the two main roads leading into town from the east, and Dubonnet made sure drivers didn't miss its advert, repainting it on two if not three different occasions. On the most recent layer 'Dubonnet' is spellt in black letters, with a peculiar 'U' that looks like the upper part of a long-stemmed glass and a 'O' inclined enough to catch one's attention. This is framed by an ochre strip above and a red one below. This hides a previous sign with 'Dubon / Dubonnet' written over two lines. This is slightly at odds with the classic slogan 'Dubo, Dubon, Dubonnet'. It makes you wonder where 'Dubo' has gone or whether the painter got it wrong. Finally there could have been at least another sign here as the traces of the triangle pointing down doesn't go with Dubonnet, and nor does the arrow on the left...Next
Location: Avenue Jourdan, Saintes, Charente-Maritime / Picture taken on: 06/06/2010
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