Cafe Gondree Original sign?

[canonuk]

Joe
Is this Original enough ? Its owner's before the Gondree family .
What may be useful is the detailing appears to match the shadow detail in the pictures from across the river .

Thanks, Tin Shed  - that's  a fantastic picture, and lots of great detail.

I think I probably have enough to go with. I think I have to accept that a 1944 pre-Pegasus Cafe photo isn't readily available, but I can make a good enough guess from the various clues. I think I'll just make a sign that has 'Gondree' at the top (probably curved), and 'Cafe Restaurant' at the bottom in two lines. I think that will probably be sufficient.

Thanks to everyone that's taken the time to look into this for me - it's very much appreciated.  I'll post some photos of the finished building in a few days time

Joe

[Plynkes]

What I wish I had was a photo of my grandmother sitting outside the cafe chatting to John Howard. She had been a friend of his late wife and met him there once during one of the commemorations. They sat and chatted about just about everything except D-Day.

Looking forward to seeing your progress, canonuk.

[carlos marighela]

The beauty of the absence of photographic evidence means that you can paint what you like, within reason and no bugger will be able to say you are wrong.

[canonuk]

I've done some more digging into this, looked carefully at some good photos on the IWM archive, used various Photoshop tools to compare panels (checking for differences in colour), and I've reached the conclusion that there was nothing painted on the side or front panels until after July 12th at least. I've made a small montage here.


The June 10th photo shows that the large front panel doesn't have anything on it, and is the same shade of grey as the neighbouring panels. If it's slightly different that could be because of painting over the 'DUVAL' sign from the previous owner, but regardless, it clearly doesn't have any writing there.

The July 12th photos show that the panel above the door is blank, and there is just a small 'Cafe Gondree' sign above the door.  The other July 12th photo again shows the front panel is blank.

So, I'll just be painting the small above-door name sign, and no large maroon signs. Those are all clearly much later than D-Day or the following month. On one hand it's a shame not to have the large distinctive sign, but I want my table to be as accurate as possible, so I'll stick with the evidence I can see here.

Thanks to everyone that's helped out here.  I'll post some pics of the model soon

Joe