Enamel Beach By-law Sign, 'Skittle Boards & Surfboards Prohibited'

Enamel Beach By-law Sign, 'Skittle Boards & Surfboards Prohibited'

$895.00
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Enamel Beach By-law Sign, 'Skittle Boards & Surfboards Prohibited'
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  • Enamel Beach By-law Sign, 'Skittle Boards & Surfboards Prohibited'
  • Enamel Beach By-law Sign, 'Skittle Boards & Surfboards Prohibited'
  • Enamel Beach By-law Sign, 'Skittle Boards & Surfboards Prohibited'
  • Enamel Beach By-law Sign, 'Skittle Boards & Surfboards Prohibited'
Enamel Beach By-law Sign, 'Skittle Boards & Surfboards Prohibited'
All objects
KOBK.26.ART.019
Enamel Beach By-law Sign, 'Skittle Boards & Surfboards Prohibited'
$895.00

Specifications

Australia, a flat Port Phillip bay beach, c. 1930s-1960s

Vitreous enamel on steel: black lettering and a white keyline on a chrome-yellow ground

Legend: USE OF SKITTLE BOARDS & SURFBOARDS PROHIBITED

A council beach by-law: a skittle board is a board skimmed across the shallow flats at low tide, kept, with surfboards, clear of the swimmers

Now mounted on hessian in a reclaimed hardwood frame, screwed through the sign's original fixing holes

Framed 80 cm wide, 45 cm high, 2 cm deep; 5.7 kg; hanging hardware fitted, ready to hang

Williamstown provenance (Hobsons Bay); the exact beach is not recorded

Honest age: enamel chips, edge rust and losses, a hairline or two; the wear is the record of an outdoor life

Every KOBK object is one of one and carries its age honestly. Expect marks, wear and patina as part of the piece; any specific fault is noted above. Where an object is photographed on a stand, the stand is included.

Notes

On the flat, shallow beaches of Port Phillip, where the tide draws out a long way over hard sand, a skittle board was the thing to have: a thin board skimmed across the ankle-deep water, run at and ridden as it planed over the shallows. For a good part of the twentieth century the councils that patrolled those beaches wanted the skittle boards, and the surfboards, kept clear of the swimmers, and this enamel sign is that by-law.

It is the wording that stops you now. The surfboard is still with us; the skittle board has all but gone, a small vanished pleasure of the bayside summer. The sign came from a Williamstown estate, though the exact beach it once warned is not written down. We mounted it on a reclaimed hardwood frame through its own fixing holes, nothing new drilled. We could not find another like it anywhere.