Latest Articles

Classic Quarterboard History

12 March 2011

Nineteenth-century sailing ships displayed their names on decoratively carved and painted wood signs called quarterboards. When a ship's captain retired and went ashore he would acquire the quarterboard and place it on his house for all to admire.

International Sign Contest 2011

04 February 2011

Signs of the Times Magazine has gone public with the winners of the annual 'International Sign Contest'. We are pleased to announce that four of our signs won awards in this year's competition.

Create Your Own Handcrafted Sign!

12 January 2011

Great signs start with great designs. From day one Danthonia has valued the time of our designers and charged clients a reasonable fee for any design work. But not everyone wants to pay a designer to come up with custom designs. Some people know "just what they want", they just want to be able to communicate their ideas, and get the sign made!

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12 March 2011

Classic Quarterboard History

Back in the days of sunken ships and buried treasure it became fashionable to recover the wooden quarterboards from a wreck. The quarterboard hung from the quarter deck and proudly bore the name of the boat. Off the coast of Cape Cod there were as many as 300 wrecks a year. Residents of the cape salvaged items to sell or to decorate their homes. Often a ship had a beautiful sculpted figurehead at the bow and carved quarterboards with their ends sculpted as scallops. Quarterboards appeared over doorways of pubs and private homes. Soon enterprising people began to carve quarterboards to sell as house signs to tourists. They have been popular ever since!

Below are a few traditional and not-so-traditional quarterboard-style signs we've made over the years, many of them for customers in the Northeastern United States, where the carved quarterboard tradition originated .

A quarterboard sign in North Haven, Connecticut