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The previous owner claimed these are antique restaurant boards... they are approx. 1.2m tall x 40cm wide. Can anyone please translate them and let me know what exactly they are as well as their age.
They are presently hanging on my patio.
Thx
Jan

Are the two boards identical in size? What are their sizes in feet and inches? Do you know when and where the previous owner obtained them?

They are not signs of restaurants. More researches are needed.

They are identical in size and are 160cm (just over 5ft) tall. They are double sided so have the same writing on the obverse.
The previous owner bought them around 15 years ago from a dealer in Asian antiquities.

顏料拆光 廣豐字號

Your first picture shows:
顏料拆光

顏料 used as a compound noun, means pigment or paint.
拆光 is very hard to translate, especially used together with pigment/paint. It can mean refractive like in refractive index or tearing something down. In this case, it may (I said may) mean to make the pigment/paint to be glossy buy adding some extra stuff in it.
In short, I have never seen these four characters using together in any commercial signs I had ever seen in Hong Kong. Therefore, this sign can indeed be at least 60 years or older. (may be before 1948 since these are traditional Chinese) May be other Chinese elders can translate this.

On the second panel, it says 廣豐字號
Guang Feng 廣豐 is the name of the shop (business) while zi hao 字號 simply means the name of a shop.

Therefore I am not real sure what type of shop it was, possibly a shop that sold pigment/paint or one that painted autos or? If anybody has other suggestions, please enlighten us. Thanks.

Hi Super & Jan,

After checking with the Mathews Dictionary, which is a good source of older meanings, it appears that 顏料拆光 (yan liao chai guang) might mean "paint-remover" (chai has a secondary meaning of "to take away").

In the other panel, Mathews indicates that 字號 (Zihao) can simply mean "a firm".

Best regards,

Bill H.

Hi Bill,
Thanks. I believe you are correct. I have had 2 people in the past week confirm that one of the boards is a company or shop name and the other has to do with paint.
Cheers
Jan

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