Thursday 20 September 2012

Henri Lecocq, Lille

The ghost sign for Mondial carrelage presented yesterday wasn't the only one on this wall. Higher up a proud cockerel promoted the Société Henri Lecocq.

There isn't much information about this company. Most of the documents in which its name appear date from the 1950s and 1960s but given that Henri Lecocq was born in the late 19th or very early 20th century (the son of Henri, Robert Lecocq, was born in 1920), the company may predate the Second World War. These usually refer to Sociétes Henri Lecocq rather than the singular société. This would suggest the activities of the company were split at some point and several subsidiaries created to handle the different businesses of Henri Lecocq.

One of Lecocq's subsidiaries was the river shipping and insurrance company La Fluviale Lecocq based Rue Meurein, a couple of hundred metres away from this ghost sign. This company also had offices in Calais and Paris and its barges seem to have carried goods along the rivers and canals of northern France and Belgium as well as the Moselle and the Rhine in Germany.

S Henri
Lecocq

The harbour of Lille on the Deûle Canal and its warehouses extend not far away from the building on which this ghost sign is painted and this may be why this space was chosen to promote Henri Lecocq's company.

This ghost sign was painted by TEFFRI. The name can be seen in the bottom right corner of the last picture.

Location: Avenue Architecte Cordonnier, Lille, Nord / Pictures taken in June 2012

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