Palette Mode
Crossfire Neon Glassbending
Contact

Unit 6, Roan Arches. Ring the bell twice — the extractor is loud

Send a drawing, a photograph, or the words and roughly how wide. We answer every enquiry ourselves and usually within a working day.

Enquiry

Tell us what you want made

If you have a drawing, a photo or a font name, that is the single most useful thing you can give us.

This is a design prototype — the form does not submit anywhere. In the editor it posts to the site's own enquiry handler.

The shop

Unit 6, Roan Arches
Bronze Street
Deptford, London SE8 3QR

Under the viaduct, third arch from the creek end. There is no sign on the door, which we are aware of the irony of.

020 7946 0418
Bench hours. The phone is answered outside these; the door is not.
Monday–Thursday8.00 – 17.30
Friday8.00 – 15.00
SaturdayBy arrangement
SundayClosed
VisitorsThursday pm
Finding it

Third arch from the creek end

Deptford station is six minutes' walk; Greenwich DLR is twelve. There is loading space on Bronze Street for about twenty minutes before somebody objects.

Locator map: Unit 6 Roan Arches sits on Bronze Street, between the railway viaduct to the north and Deptford Creek to the east.
Asked most

Five questions, answered properly

Is it actual neon?

Some of it. “Neon” is used for the whole trade, but neon gas itself only gives you the orange-red. Everything else is argon with a bead of mercury behind a coloured or coated tube — which is still hand-bent glass with a gas in it, and still nothing to do with LED.

How long will it last?

A properly bombarded unit runs 40,000 hours or more — twenty years at eight hours a day. The transformer usually goes first and is a cheap part to replace. When a length does eventually fail it is one length, not the sign.

Can you match a colour from a photograph?

We can get close, and we will tell you honestly how close. Send the photograph and we will name the nearest two we stock and light both of them for you to look at. Screens lie about neon more than about almost anything else.

Do you make LED signs?

No. There are twenty firms within a mile who do it well and we are happy to name one. This shop exists to bend glass, and running both would mean doing one of them badly.

Can I watch it being made?

Yes — Thursday afternoons. Ring first, because if the bombarder is running we will not hear the door, and bring something over your eyes if you wear contact lenses; the shop is dry and hot.

Or just ring. Someone is on the bench until half five.

Dinah, Cal or Priya will answer. There is no call centre and there is no form to fill in before you get to speak to somebody.

020 7946 0418