Lavender Menace shop sign

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

52039

Title

Lavender Menace shop sign

Description

A two-sided wooden shop sign for bookshop "Lavender Menace". Lavender-coloured background with black lettering "Lavender Menace" with small painted eye in black. Design and lettering on both sides.

Artist / maker

Unknown

Date

1983

Type

Wood

Accession number

HH645.01.2005

Lavender Menace was Scotland’s first lesbian and gay bookshop and it opened in August 1982 in Forth Street, Edinburgh. It was set up by Sigrid Nielsen and Bob Orr. The sign was built and painted in 1983 by Jack Fuller who was Bob Orr's brother-in-law at the time. It was placed every morning on the railings above the Lavender Menace bookshop (which was in a basement and which opened in August 1982) at 11a Forth Street in Edinburgh. The sign was removed and safely stored at night until August 1987 when the shop moved premises to Dundas Street, Edinburgh. This classified it as a temporary fitting thereby by-passing planning regulations.

You can read more about Lavender Menace and their place in the History of LGBT+ Bookselling in Scotland.

Lavender Menace was revived as an online queer archive and blogsite in 2019 in the wake of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York, 1969.
Visit Lavender Menace online to find out more.

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Related subjects

Business > Service industry > Shops

Communication > Written > Signs

Places > Edinburgh areas > Broughton

Places > Scotland > Edinburgh