ABOUT
Robert and Liz Smith. A two-person studio in the Carolinas. The work is finding the signs that survived a century, knowing why they did, and placing them where they belong.
MEET OUR TEAM
Two people. Two different jobs. Robert in the field: the eye that spots a significant piece across a crowded auction hall, the dealer networks, the hunt. Liz in the studio: the research that reveals context, the writing, the photography, the spatial sense for how a piece wants to live in a room. He loves the find. She loves the translation. Different forces in the same work, and that's exactly why it works.
LIZ SMITH
Co-Founder & Creative Director
ROBERT
SMITH
FOUNDER & CURATOR
IT ALL STARTED
I was twelve when I found a 1950s porcelain Sherwin-Williams "Cover the Earth" sign in my parents' basement. That was the start.
Summers were spent at my grandparents' house, where antiques came with stories. Wartime heroes, legendary athletes, musicians. They taught me to look for what was behind the object. Baseball cards came first. Signs followed.
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THE PROFESSIONAL JOURNEY
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Played college basketball at Lees-McRae, earned a B.S. in Business Administration. After college, I worked as a PGA golf professional, then as General Manager at several resorts.
The hunt pulled me back. I returned to the Carolinas and ran my own auction company for fifteen years, sourcing and authenticating vintage advertising signs for collectors. The picking I'd done since I was twelve became the actual job.
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​THE WORK NOW
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Today, the focus is on European and American vintage advertising signs. The work is sourcing, authenticating, and placing them with collectors who care about what they're holding. The best pieces aren't always with the dealers. They're in estates, in old auction archives, in homes where no one knows what they have. Finding them is what I do.
LIZ
SMITH
CO-FOUNDER & CREATIVE DIRECTOR
WHAT OTHERS MISS
Most people see vintage signs as decoration. Nostalgia. A bit of character for a man cave or industrial loft.
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I hear ghosts.
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The sound of sleet on porcelain enamel in an Alsatian winter. Tobacco smoke that's lived in layers of paint for seventy years. The ringing aftermath of air raids still trapped in embossed metal. These aren't objects - they're vessels. And in a world that treats everything as disposable, as content, as something to scroll past, most people have forgotten how to listen.
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My path here was never traditional. Political science taught me to hunt for primary sources, to question the official story. Years in special collections showed me what gets overlooked, discarded, forgotten - and why that's exactly what matters most. Running a gallery taught me something collectors often miss: the moment someone stops seeing an object and starts seeing their object. But more than that - how a piece needs space to breathe. How it needs to be in conversation with what surrounds it, not just mounted. How fifty signs on a wall is just noise, but one, well-placed, well-lit... becomes the room.
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A year in Germany, decades of relationships across Europe - I don't just know the language. I know the pace of life these signs hung in. The dining that happened beneath them. The human scale they were designed for. The woman in Alsace who commissioned bold advertising art in a man's world because she understood what I understand: you don't ask permission to take up space. You just take it.​
I might spend three days tracking down a Parisian bistro's original location to verify one detail. I'll reach out to Belgian archives to decode mysterious initials. Not because I'm thorough - because these pieces deserve someone who won't let their stories die.
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​Robert and I met fifteen years ago. He has the eye to spot a significant piece across a crowded auction hall - the instinct that can't be taught. I have the eye to understand why it's significant. The research that reveals context. The spatial sense of how it wants to live, not just hang. He loves the hunt. I love the translation - the bridge between what was and what could be.
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We're different forces in this work. And that's exactly why it works.​​​
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THE QUIET REBELLION
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Here's what I know: In an age of algorithmic feeds and planned obsolescence, people are starving for something real. They just don't always have the language for it yet.
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They want craftsmanship that outlasts trends. History they can touch. Objects that remember. Beauty that doesn't apologize for taking up space.
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These signs are a quiet rebellion against a culture that's forgotten how to make things that matter. Against surfaces that stay surfaces. Against the idea that new is better, that story doesn't count, that soul is too expensive to preserve.
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We're not selling decoration. We're not building collections for collections' sake. We're helping you find the piece that deserves to be in your home - and then showing you how to let it live there the way it was meant to. As art. As witness. As something worth leaving behind.
DISCOVER MORE
The collection. The services. The conversations.
