Description
metal warning sign, with clear depiction of arrow pointing to a person's chest- arrows are dangerous.
Curator's Notes
People cannot be trusted not to lick electricity. Which is why signs like this exist. A material warning.
Before electricity companies took over, gas companies had the monopoly on urban lighting. The transition from gas to electricity is an interesting one: from romantic yellow gas light to cold, exposing electricity; OR the transition from dull and dirty gas light to the clean blue-white glare of electricity. "Gas lights darkness, whereas electricity annihilates it" [from Lynda Nead's excellent book, Victorian Babylon, pg 83].
And then there's the changing flow of profits. Gas companies lost money when the lamp lighters went on strike in 1872 [and the city was plunged back into a darkness relieved only by candles and oil- so we can assume candlemakers did well from it]. But it was the rise and rise of electricity that was truly threatening. Experiments were proving that it was cheaper, cleaner to produce, and did more to light up a space.
By the end of the 1900s gas was "the old light" and electricity was "the new light".
But how does light fit into materiality? Thoughts on the back of a [vintage] postcard of a gas lamp.
