Antique Armour's Butterine Sign

When I found this sign, I was at a garage sale in Anacortes, Washington, in a very old neighborhood (I seem to have good luck in older neighborhoods). Nothing really stood out at first, just an old Eastman-Kodak camera and several crates holding some tins and bottles. I then spotted a rusted piece of wrinkled metal sticking halfway out of an old picnic basket. I saw it had writing on it, so I pulled it out and realized it was an old sign. I ended up buying it and a vintage marjoram spice can. When I got home, I found a way online to clean off rust, which worked amazingly on the sign, as you can see in the pictures. I'm sorry I don't have any photos of it before the cleaning. Check out the square nail holes. You can see more pictures here.


Armour's Butterine Metal Advertising Sign

Butterine is a butter imitation developed in France by a chemist named Hippolyte Mege-Mouries in the late 1860s at a contest sponsored by Napoleon III for the best butter substitute. Butterine was one name for margarine, which is made from vegetable oil and animal lard, however now it is mostly vegetable oil. Along with other butterine manufacturers in America, Armour Inc. began producing butterine sometime in the late 1800s-early 1900s, and, being a meat processing company, used mainly animal fat and some other ingredients from their plant.

Anacortes is an old salmon fishing and cannery town, and this sign may very well have hung outside some kind of grocery or supply store. Makes you wonder how butterine and canned salmon tastes! :)