As they struggled through the decades of cold war gloom and repression, Warsaw\u2019s neon signs became symbols of light, colour and hope of brighter days. What had started as a form of Soviet propaganda sparked a wave of creativity in the Polish capital that even the Communist authorities could not crush.<\/p>\n
But after communism ended in the late 1980s, many of the signs lost their purpose and began to disappear, left to rust where they hung or removed and taken to the scrapyard.<\/p>\n
Several decades later, neon is enjoying a renaissance in the city. Many historic signs have been restored as new ones are custom-made for bars and restaurants as a nod to the past.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Warsaw\u2019s Neon Museum<\/a>, created in 2012 by Ilona Karwi\u0144ska, a Polish-British photographer, and her partner David Hill, a graphic designer, attracts more than 100,000 visitors a year to see its collection of cold war-era illuminations.<\/p>\n The founders\u2019 interest in neon signs began in 2006 and they opened the museum six years later. Photograph: Ilona Karwi\u0144ska<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we started this, the neon signs were unloved and unwanted. They were ancient and rusting. Many were being taken down and tossed away,\u201d Hill said of the couple\u2019s interest in the signs, which began on a 2006 visit.<\/p>\n \u201cIlona decided to photograph those that were still up as part of a personal project. We thought it would take a couple of months and we\u2019d get back to our lives. Now it is our lives. We\u2019ve become neon nerds.\u201d<\/p>\n After Karwi\u0144ska\u2019s photos were exhibited and featured in several bestselling books, people called to offer signs, leading to the museum opening in 2012. \u201cIt showed the interest and love people had for them, even though they were thought to have no social or cultural value,\u201d Hill said.<\/p>\n Neon signs emerged in the early 20th century after the 1898 discovery of the noble gas by the British chemists William Ramsay and Morris Travers. The French engineer Georges Claude pioneered the use of high-voltage electricity passed through sealed glass tubes filled with neon and argon gases, with the first commercial neon sign sold to a Paris hairdresser in 1913. A decade later, the \u201cliquid fire\u201d advertisements were introduced in the US.<\/p>\n Warsaw got its first neon sign in 1926, but few of the 70 that followed survived the second world war, when the occupying Nazis razed up to 90% of the city in retaliation for the 1944 Warsaw Uprising<\/a> by the Polish resistance.<\/p>\n The postwar \u201cneonisation\u201d of Poland<\/a> began in 1956 when the government of what was now a Soviet satellite state set up the Reklama company to manufacture lights and luminous signs.<\/p>\n