Palette Mode
Crossfire Neon Glassbending
Deptford · since 1974

Hand-bent glass.
Lit by gas.

Crossfire is a working neon shop under the railway arches at Deptford. We draw the pattern full size, soften the tube over a ribbon burner, fill it with neon or argon and wire it to a transformer that will still be running in twenty years. No LED flex. No vinyl. No imitations.

Send us a drawing See what we make
The sample wall at the back of the shop: finished units hung on a mounting rail and lit — a large blue C, a pink script run, an amber directional and a violet ring.
52 years on the same bench
46 tube colours in stock
3–4 wks typical lead time
2,400+ units out on walls
A length of 12mm tube softening over the ribbon burner on the bending bench, glowing amber where the flame touches it, with the full-size pattern taped to the bench below.
The bench, mid-bend. The tube goes soft at about 700°C and you have four seconds.
The shop

Ted Marchetti lit the first tube here in 1974. The bench has not moved since.

Ted took over Unit 6 when it was still a wheelwright's, put a ribbon burner where the forge had been, and spent thirty years making signs for pubs, chip shops and one municipal swimming baths. Dinah Okoro started as his apprentice in 1996 and bought the shop in 2011.

Almost nothing about the work has changed. The glass still comes from the same two suppliers, the patterns are still drawn full size in red pencil, and the bending is still done by hand over an open flame, because there is no machine that does it and there is unlikely to be one. What has changed is who calls: as often a set decorator or a museum now as a landlord wanting OPEN in the window.

More about the shop
What we do

Six things, done properly, in one unit under the arches

Everything is made here. Nothing is bought in, rebadged, or sent out to a trade bender in another city.

  • New signs, bent to your drawing

    From a scribble on the back of a receipt to a full-size pattern, then glass. 8 to 15mm tube, forty-six colours, single or multi-circuit.

    from £3403–4 weeks

  • Rebends and repairs

    A cracked length is one length, not a dead sign. We match the colour, rebend the section and re-seal it. Most units are back on the wall inside a fortnight.

    from £95 a length7–14 days

  • Transformers, electrics and testing

    Electronic or copper-core, sized to the run and not to the catalogue. Everything leaves here burned in for 24 hours and signed off with a test certificate.

    from £120BS EN 50107

  • Survey, drawing and mounting design

    We measure the wall, draw the unit at full size and tell you honestly whether the thing you have in mind can be bent. Sometimes it cannot.

    free inside the M25£180 beyond

  • Installation

    Standoffs, trays, listed-building fixings and the conversation with the landlord. Two of us, a Transit and a set of ladders that have seen most of south London.

    from £280fully insured

  • Hire for sets and events

    Around ninety pieces in the hire stock, most of them ours, some of them Ted's. Flight-cased, PAT-tested and delivered with a spare transformer.

    from £85 a week90 pieces

Recent work

Three off the bench this quarter

An OPEN sign in blue tube inside a pink double border, hung on two chains.
OPEN, blue over pink borderThe Dovetail, SE14
A three-stage chasing arrow in amber tube on a dark tray, with its chase controller screwed to the frame.
Three-stage chaser, amberRye Lane car park
A twelve-spoke starburst in blue and amber tube around a violet double ring.
Starburst, rebuilt from a 1958 originalPrivate, Margate
What people say

Three customers, none of them paid to say it

“Dinah told me the design I'd brought in couldn't be bent, drew me a version that could in about four minutes, and it has been over the bar for six years without a flicker.”

Marcus Feely · The Dovetail, New Cross

“We needed nine practical signs for a 1970s period shoot and needed them lit on camera, not glowing plastic. They built the lot in five weeks and came to set to hang them.”

Rosalind Hare · set decorator

“They matched a 1958 amber we could only supply as a photograph, and documented the rebuild properly so the file stands up to a conservation review. Rare.”

Dr Ayo Bankole · collections, Museum of the Coast

Bring us a drawing. Or a photo. Or just describe it on the phone.

We quote from anything. If it cannot be bent we will tell you that before you have paid for anything.

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