Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Album of design examples by Althouse & Geiger Pty Ltd, c. 1945–1959

Album of design examples by Althouse & Geiger Pty Ltd, c. 1945–1959

Ink and watercolour or poster paint on card in ring bound album

PXE 1514  Box 2

Presented by Jennifer Sims, May 2010


Americans John Althouse and FA Geiger arrived in Sydney in 1875 and within a year established their partnership as signwriters, painters and decorators. Through necessity, the firm’s wide rage of services changed over time – from silvering mirrors in the early days to decorative and banner painting in the early 1900s. In the 1960s large hand painted billboards were the rage then later in the century illuminated signage, automated displays and fluorescent lighting. The historic firm lives on as althousegeiger.com.au.

Althouse & Geiger also produced banners for carnival sideshows including ‘Jimmy Sharman’s Touring Stadium’ and his famous boxing troupe.


There are two Althouse & Geiger trade union banners in the State Library’s collection, one promoting the Federated Society of Boilermakers and the other the Blacksmiths’ Society of Australasia. 

‘Sometimes I think Sydney must be the world’s best sign-written city,’ asserts a 1965 handwritten letter in the archive from the late signwriter Walter Tarr.‘To the public, Sydney is just one shop after another but to an observant [sign]-writer, it is an art gallery … We tell the world everything it wants to know.’

The Boilermakers’ banner appeared in the 2010 exhibition ONE hundred, celebrating the Mitchell Library centenary.

An Althouse & Geiger apprenticeship in the 1920s required five years of on-the-job training at a beginning salary of 13 shillings a week, concluding in year 5 with 53 shillings, 3 pence.

Althouse & Geiger had kept a city building for many years, first in George Street, then shifting to Liverpool Street before settling in Sussex Street and finally to 190 Parramatta Road, Camperdown.

In 1985, Leonard Sims became the Althouse & Geiger director in the absence of interested heirs. Sims acted as the firm’s unofficial historian, writing speeches and historical summaries, and collecting photographs and memorabilia.