[Art + Design] The West Indian Rum Shop

One of my favourite things about visiting Grenada are the hand painted advertisements and in particular the signs. I’d always wondered who was responsible for applying them and was lucky enough last year to witness an artist putting the finishing touches to a mobile phone logo on a wall in St. Georges.

Before he passed away my grandad owned a rum shop which was frequented by locals and my cousins and I to fill our bellies with the local sweets and bottles of Fanta (I still don’t know what the red flavour is to this day!). Although the outside of his shop wasn’t one of the more illustrative ones it served as a place for people to come together…until my granny told them otherwise!

The connection between these shops and the brightly painted signs of African barbershops and hairdressers is an interesting one too. Most rum shops serve not only as bars but also as small connivence stores.

 1.Absolut Watering Hole  2.Bounty  3.Jam Rock  4.Heineken 5.Barbados corner shop 6.Cockspur