American Sign Museum visitors quickly discover the museum displays not only signs but other sign-related items, such as materials and equipment, salesman’s samples, sign components, and even such ad-specialty items as 1950s-era promotional cigarette lighters; souvenir glasses from NESA shows; sign-company-inscribed, ballpoint-pen giveaways, etc. Entering the museum, visitors can also peruse some of the earliest of the museum’s collection of more than 300, sign-related catalogs.
Interspersed with the vintage literature are 20 or so vintage signtags – promotional, metal and porcelain-enamel plates usually mounted on the side of a sign cabinet, which identify the sign manufacturer. Signtags, especially those of sign companies that have come and gone, have become quite collectible.
The museum recently more than doubled its signtag collection, thanks to Lisa Peterson, Federal Heath’s marketing manager, who donated 30 different, predominately porcelain-enamel signtags. Nineteen are specific to Federal Sign; the balance are from other sign companies, including a number of once-prominent Chicago names such as Arrow Sign Company, Acme-Wiley and Flashtric.
The Federal signtags not only depict the logo’s evolution, but they also document the company’s association with the selective “club” of Zeon manufacturers (evidenced in the plastic Federal tag), and early status as a Claude Neon franchise (note the three, different “Claude Neon Federal” tags). And, in a seemingly prophetic twist, a 1960s-era “Heath and Company,” screenprinted, aluminum tag pre-dates Federal’s purchase of Heath and Co., as does the 1950s J.F. Zimmerman signtag.
Beyond the collection’s historical importance, Federal Heath, which was founded in 1901, was an electric-sign-industry pioneer. The museum owns three, different examples of Federal lightbulb signs from the 1901-1910 era and an early, porcelain/opal-glass sign recently acquired, thanks to Encore Image (Ontario, CA). Over the next century, the company weathered the stormier days and evolved with the times, unlike some of its fellow sign companies, some of which were represented in the donated signtag collection.
Federal Heath values its long tradition of sign manufacturing and design, and the company has been a strong museum supporter. Under CEO and President Kevin Stotmeister’s leadership, Federal Heath has coordinated, at its own expense, more than several sign acquisitions on behalf of the museum. The company has backed its “in kind” efforts with significant financial contributions from the very beginning. In fact, Federal was one of four sponsors of the museum’s prototype museum, unveiled at the International Sign Assn.’s Sign Expo in Las Vegas in March 2001.
That event was the museum’s first public appearance, and, while it was only nine years ago, it seems so much longer. The museum has come a long way since its founding in 1999, but none of this would have been possible without the support of such companies as Federal Heath.