After being in Europe for a few months now, and living in the cities of Florence and Paris, I have seen quite a bit of neon. Being a nerd neon artist, I pay attention to these things and get excited when theres lots of neon. Here is a collection of various (but not all) neon signs I saw while traveling around and being in Florence.
Lots of neon signs overhang into the streets in Florence like this.
Neon….. At the Venice Biennale Japanese Pavilion
Europeans LOVE their T- Seals, I see them everywhere and its nuts. Also the wire they use is very thin and at times it is a single strand of not even insulated wire connecting two electrodes.
Ali and I walked by this old Movie theater while in La Spezia (Italy)
They had an old uncoated ruby cinema sign.
"The Friends" bar in Florence
True Love, Florence
This restaurant was right down the street from us in Florence….
After being in Florence for awhile, I start looking at the neon when I go to the Ponte vecchio…..
I think this sign was new...
Who knew Tecnolux was in Europe! Maybe this sign was imported. Nice sign. T- Seals and it looks like they T- seal on the tubing for the bombarding. Crazy.
This neon Jet was in the "Glasstress" exhibition on Murano.
While in Europe I learned to cook and I love cooking now. Im a food snob and I cook delicious food for myself. Every morning I went to Al Mercato Centrale and it was awesome to just be able to walk there. This sign was at one of the meat stalls.
This was a big sign in Florence. INA is a big company in Europe but I am not sure what they do.
Italian Chinese food
Karisma, Rome
I like the boat, Venice
Here is another sign for a restaurant that was right down my street
This was a touristy, awful gelato place but they had some cool neon!
T-Seals! and you can see the un insulated single wire being used to carry the high voltage.
Florence
At the end of the Ferrari Museum in Maranello, there is a neon sign ushering you to drive the f1 "simulators" they have.
This shop near Al Mercato Centrale sold all sorts of stuff for disco places and DJs.
This touristy shop in Florence had a really bright sign.
Usually when a place is a cafe and bar with Gelato, it usually has really crappy gelato. Florence
This multicolor sign is in Al Mercato Centrale a Firenze
While in Venice, we stumbled upon this strange store. I really am not sure what they sell or do there but I wanted to go in as there was a ton of cool neon. They were never open when I went by.
There are lots of nice mannequins in this shop.
I really liked this lamp.
Florence
Here is another neon piece at the "Glasstress" exhibition in Murano. Its supposed to spell out "Artificial" but the first half was not lit. I wonder if this was on purpose?
Really neat neon light bulbs though!
While in Rome, I saw the coolest CFL I have ever seen. The production on most incandescent bulbs in Europe came to a halt a few years ago and CFLs are everywhere. This one was awesome!
This was the sign to the restaurant in i Giardini della Biennale Venezia where the Biennale was. I liked it. Pink and White!
Paris Neon
Ali and I spent our whole fall break in the city of light. Paris is great and I love big cities. In France, all of the neon is borosilicate and this makes things really neat. There really aren't any of the rich colors that you get from colored glass in the Paris neon because there are no colored glass boro silicate tubes. Instead, all of the colors are from phosphor tubes and I think that the limit on colors actually makes them choose better colors. The electrodes are funny and there are still LOTS of T seals. Enjoy…..
Bike shop
This cafe was right down the street from where we stayed.
In Europe, there are pharmacies everywhere. In France its "Pharmacie" and in Italy its "farmacia" You see the green crosses on many streets and they are drugstores and some of them even have doctors you can go to if your sick. In Paris, there were many animated LED and neon pharmacy signs with lots of neon.
Animated healthcare is the best!
Like you would see in movies, Paris has lots of small cafe's and bakeries. The French are excellent bakers and after I went to Paris, all I wanted to do was bake things. It was awesome!
In Italy, a tabaccheria is a place that sold bus tickets and lottery tickets and cigarettes sometimes sodas. In France they have tabaccherias and they are always marked with a red neon diamond.
Sometimes the diamonds are awesome!
Ali and I went to an Art Museum, "Le Centre Pompidou" and saw contemporary art. After seeing nothing but renaissance art for the past few months in Florence, the Roy Lichtenstein exhibition in Paris was a breath of fresh air! Le Centre Pompidou updates their collection every two years and their focus is on artwork created in the past 50 years. They had all kinds of cool stuff here!
The Hybrid Song boxes change colors.
While in Paris, I tried to go to a few neon shops without much luck. The city of light does have several neon shops but trying to visit them was not easy at all. Ali and I went to them a few times while they were open but they were never actually at their shops.
Boro silicate color options (phosphor tubes)
They are open, but nobody is there. It wasn't even siesta hours!
Down the street there was this shop. The dog there tried to jump through the glass door when I looked at the sign on the door. The dog was their but no humans.
This shop left a number to call "en cas d' absence" and even an email. Without a working french cell phone and with barely any access to internet, Ali and I were out of luck when it came to the shops. We were hoping to find someone who spoke english, italian, or spanish and we could talk with them but we couldn't even find french neon people.
At the Decograph shop they had some boro electrodes. I suppose the little wire is why only the tip of the electrode is covered by the cap.
Perfect right angles.
Another Farmacia sign.
Paris (and lots of other European cities) have a lot of high fashion stores.
Some of them incorporate neon into their displays.
Some signs had other strange boro electrodes.
I like this Indian restaurant sign. The tubing diameter was ridiculous.
The European benders really love their T-Seals! T-Seal double back drop with mega diameter tubing!
Paris has many different streets or districts where a bunch of similar shops will be bunched together. While walking one day, we walked by a district of video game stores.
Level UP!
Speaking of districts……..
While walking through Paris one night, we stumbled upon Pigalle, the paris sex district. There was LOTS of neon there! This cat place sign flashed two different colors.
That Windmill spun and the sign spun. The Fe´erie sign was red and yellow flashing and the sign above the "Rouge" spun. That setup was nuts!
Temple De La Diva!
This sign was nuts! It had tubes of many different colors behind it and they all strobed off and on at different times super fast. It was awesome!
SOOOOOO Many sex shops all on one street. They were literally one after another.
nice neon lady
I like that round "Projection Video" sign that fills the round window. Cool!
Neon Romans!
This place was big enough to be a department store!
Its pretty crazy to think that all this is boro silicate!
The French boro neon is a bit different. I really wanted to see how they did T-seals so well. Even to bombard their tubes it seems that they used T-seals instead of tubulated electrodes.
Record pressing? There were still lots of music stores in many european cities. All of them have english music too. If I had more money, I would be buying CDs and records.
Lipp Lipp
Going green?
We saw Jason Rhoades neon at Le Centre Pompidou. Someone had one of his neon works in their slideshow for Fred. I couldn't believe I was seeing one here.
We saw some of the erotic tradition signage in the Pigalle district!
I like the cart wheels he mounts the transformers on. he doesn't just mount them on the wheels though, first they go on some plastic plate. Good neon engineering. DO IT RIGHT!
Euro Neon!
