Illustrated with characteristic brio by Paul Bommer, this is The Cockney Alphabet, sometimes known as the Surrealist Alphabet. It is first recorded in the late 1920s, and was seen as a parody of the mnemonic-didactic lists of letters and words that have been taught to children from at least the mid-nineteenth century.  It seems to require English as its base language, and while it has been offered in a variety of forms, it pays a consistent tribute to that much-loved linguistic freak: the pun.

It must, because in language as in life we demand our creation myths, have an origin. My predecessor in slang lexicography, Eric Partridge, who in 1961 published a monograph on the subject, sought links to the children’s alphabets of the nineteenth century when A was most commonly either an ‘Apple’ or an ‘Archer’, and the practical ones of World War I signallers when clarity was all and the letter was enunciated as ack (able and alpha would follow later, products of a new cataclysm). Pushing further back, he made reference to Old English. But this was surely wishful thinking and the origins, or to be more precise the first recorded appearance, remains less than a century old.

It all starts around 1930. There are roots of course and attributions, not least to a throwaway line from Jonathan Swift’s Polite Conversation – his skewering of supposedly smart society’s verbal clichés – of 1734, and Swift was also responsible for a humorous alphabet in which each phrase was created by prefixing a letter of the Greek alphabet to the word guinea, e.g. alpha guinea (half a…), beta guinea (bet a…), gamma (i.e. game which also means bet) guinea etc., but for the genuine beginnings we must return to the palmy, not to mention stilted days when Lord Reith still sat on high and all was right with the BBC:

There have been alternatives – A, for instance, can stand for ‘ism’, E for ‘brick’, N for ‘mation’, T for ‘painful’ and Z for ‘effect’ and each letter can muster half a dozen or so – but this is the canonical list. Paul Bommer’s version follows very much on these lines. It has an added dimension, denied other examples of this popular, if skewed A-Z, of referring whenever possible to Spitalfields landmarks, for instance the action of K for Restaurant ‘takes place’ in E. Pellicci. R for Cock Linnet offers a sign for the one-time animal market of Club Row, P for relief is set on Middlesex Street (with ads for ‘Schmutter,’ ‘Whistles’ and ‘Titfers’) and so on.

Charlie Clapham and Bill Dwyer, the cross-talk double act who were the first of their kind to be broadcast on the BBC, and the first to air this version of the A-Z, called it the ‘Surrealist Alphabet’; more often it is known as the Cockney one. The question must be asked; is it in fact either? As for the former, the French poet Apollinaire, who coined the term in 1918, would not have recognised it as especially avant garde. If it is surrealist then it is not ‘super-realism, the literal meaning, but a weaker, popularised use: quirky or eccentric.  As for Cockney… listening to the scratchy recording of Clapham and Dwyer from 1933, it is apparent that the former, who had been a clerk in legal chambers, was no East Ender. Photos have him in a stereotyped ‘silly ass’ monocle, sometimes even a topper, and his accent is to match. Dwyer, who had been a commercial traveller, is a candidate for Cockneydom, but if his syllables suggest a Londoner, they are nothing like the self-consciously tortured tones of such music hall ‘costermongers’ as Gus Elen.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

It was not the first word-game that used the alphabet as its source. For instance there was the nursery sequence, again based on that ubiquitous apple, in this case en-pastried: ‘A was an Apple-pie, B bit it, C cut it, D dealt it,  all the way to ‘X,Y,Z and Ampersand’ who ‘All wish’d for a piece in hand’. Nor is it the last. In December 2000 Jeff Aronson, a clinical pharmacologist, published his ‘medical alphabet’ in The Lancet:

The list ended with ‘Z for de doctor (I’be got a code iddy doze)’, although that combination had already been used in less specialist phonetic compilations.

It is, however, the most important, or at least the source from which all others have stemmed. The reality seems to be, and again I nod to Partridge, that the alphabet was generated sometime in the Twenties, as a form of game conjured up by the touring casts of Variety shows, playing with words to help while away the tedium of provincial boarding houses. Its basis is indeed the old children’s alphabets, which it parodies. Somewhere along that line Clapham and Dwyer must have picked it up (although they had had no Variety career themselves); the radio gave it a popularity among the uninitiated. It was not especially Cockney – Spitalfields references aside, it is only the dropping of the aitches in the first line (and in L, i.e. ’ell, and R, i.e. ’arf) that suggests the connection (and Cockneys are hardly unique in that omission) – but after the pre-war radio duo, it was heard most commonly on the lips of comedians, again BBC stars, such as Flanagan and Allen (they of the Crazy Gang), Arthur Askey (and R, in one version is ‘for Askey’ and in time ‘for Daley’) and Ted Ray, all of whom played the metropolitan card.

So if not surrealist and if – strictly speaking – Cockney has to be declared a misnomer, then what is the alphabet? The answer must be what Partridge if few others have termed it: a comic phonetic alphabet. Ultimately it is about pronunciation and beyond that, puns. Sometimes ‘for’ may need to be pronounced ‘fer’ but at others it requires the sound of standard English. As in rhyming slang certain popular figures, e.g. ‘I for Novello,’ have been sustained within its playfulness, but again, they are not especially Cockney. Others have vanished, e.g. ‘K for ancis’: Kay Francis, a twenties star, having left little trace. ‘K for Restaurant’ has succeeded, and is timeless. That it depends on the pronunciation ‘kayf’ rather than the Frenchified café does nod Eastwards, but the word is far more usually sounded ‘caff’.

Clapham and Dwyer were big enough to be included in early TV’s programming for the 1937 Coronation but they seem to have faded with the Thirties. Their alphabetical creation – or at least popularization – is in robust health. The ludic potential remains. Y for ‘unts, anyone? Z for Elli?

Copies of Jonathon Green’s epic three volume masterpiece ‘Green’s Dictionary of Slang’ are available here.

Copies of Paul Bommer’s print ‘The Cockney Alphabet’ are available from the Spitalfields Life online shop.

You may like to read my original profile

Jonathon Green, Lexicographer

The Gentle Author.

The Auriculas of Spitalfields.

At the Vintner’s Hall.

At the Cross Bones Cemetery.

The Pear Tree where John Williams, suspect in the Ratcliffe Highway Murders was arrested.

Rhyming slang.

From The Signs of Old London.

A Night in the Bakery at St John.

According to legend, Brutus came from Troy to found London.

Catherine Wheel Alley, Spitalfields.

From The Signs of Old London.

Old Father Thames.

William Shakespeare in Spitalfields.

Grasshopper, symbol of Thomas Gresham, from The Signs of Old London.

“Three for a girl  and four for a …”

Garnet St, Wapping.

Rhyming slang.

The Gun, Brushfield St.

Half Moon, Holywell St, from The Signs of Old London.

Columbia Rd Market.

Quaker St, Spitalfields.

The Fox, Lombard St, from The Signs of Old London.

Images copyright © Paul Bommer

You may like to see the earlier selections of

Paul Bommer’s Delft Tiles

More of Paul Bommer’s Delft Tiles

Yet More of Paul Bommer’s Delft Tiles

and also read about

Simon Pettet’s Tiles at Dennis Severs’ House

A Fireplace in Fournier St

John Moyr Smith’s Tiles

Tickets are £3, available from LVX Books 020 8983 2087 or email admin@lxvbooks.com. Wine will be served and books signed afterwards.

Gary Arber, printer

Roy Emmins, sculptor

Stanley Rondeau, Huguenot

Mr Pussy in Spring.

At the Ten Bells.

Rhyming Slang.

Oranges & Lemons Say the Bells of St Clements.

At Jones Brothers’ Dairy.

The Laurel Tree, former pub in Brick Lane.

One for sorrow, two for joy…

Rose Alley, off Bishopsgate.

Turk’s Head, former pub in Wapping.

The Crown & Leek, former pub in Deal St.

At the Tweed Cycle Run.

Jane Amelia Parker makes jewellery out of clay pipes from the Thames.

Swanfield St, Bethnal Green was once a roosting ground for swans.

At Bow Cemetery.

At the Carpenters’ Arms.

Fleur de Lys St, off Commercial St.

The Cries of London.

Truman, Hanbury & Buxton, brewers of Brick Lane.

Rhyming Slang.

The London Stone in Cannon St is believed by some to date from the origins of the City.

The Romance of Old Bishopsgate.

The symbol of Childs Bank from The Signs of Old London.

Will Somers, Shakespearian clown buried at St Leonards Shoreditch.

Maria Pellicci, The Meatball Queen of Bethnal Green.

At St Dunstans’ Church, Stepney.

“Bran” is the giant from mythology buried under the Tower of London and also the Welsh word for raven.

Stasia Makarewicz of Topolski in Maltby St.

At Alexander Boyd’s Tailoring Workshop.

Images copyright © Paul Bommer

You may like to see the earlier selections of

Paul Bommer’s Delft Tiles

More of Paul Bommer’s Delft Tiles

and also read about

Simon Pettet’s Tiles at Dennis Severs’ House

A Fireplace in Fournier St

John Moyr Smith’s Tiles

Nicola McShane & Ruth Ward-Jackson of Pattern Textiles, showing off their design samples.

In a former clothing factory in Bethnal Green, where once machinists sweated sewing endless identical garments for low wages, a group of astute young women have set up their own business designing patterns for textiles and – in just six years – achieved considerable success in a fiercely competitive industry, selling their designs to the big players in the High St and internationally.

After writing so many stories of the long history of textiles in the East End, it was my pleasure to visit Pattern Textiles and realise that I was meeting those who carry the future of this endeavour. Stepping in from the gloomy weather of a disappointing late spring day, and climbing up the second floor, I entered the large studio teeming with life and colour. Here, patterns were being drawn on paper. Here, patterns were being rendered digitally on screens. Here, with superlative efficiency and speed, patterns were emerging from a vast industrial-sized digital printer. And here, patterns were being printed with a traditional silk screen too. A harmonious atmosphere prevailed, as if everyone knew what to do, and they were getting on with it. As if everyone in the team understood their place in the larger pattern.

Yet the greatest wonder came when Nicola McShane, who began Pattern Textiles in partnership with Ruth Jackson-Ward and Stephanie Neal, threw open a huge suitcase crammed with hundreds of pieces of silk chiffon and, like a conjurer’s assistant, began to pull them out with a flourish, one-by-one, for me to see. Each piece was a unique textile design sewn into the shape of the front of a dress, and she held them up to demonstrate how an experienced buyer could envisage each one as a potential garment. When a design is sold to a maufacturer, the customer keeps the sample and it is taken out of the case. Here in this single well-travelled suitcase was the entire stock in trade of Pattern Textiles – florals and geometrics and leopard skin and stripes, and everything else you care to imagine, designs for women of different ages and to suit different needs, at work, at home, and dressing up for occasions. The versatility of the range is crucial to sales, but the common factor here was a vibrant use of colour, and a positive graphic sense of pattern and texture, imbuing all the designs with a sensuous appeal.

“The three of us used to work in another studio – that’s how we met – and we decided we could set up a studio of our own.” explained Ruth. “It was tough. We built up a collection of our own before we went out to sell it.” continued Nicola, “Ruth specialised in embroidery and embellishment, whereas I had worked as a textile designer for four different companies and Stephanie was very skilled at screen-printing. But in fact, we mixed it up and we all did everything. We gathered together people we thought were good and we recruited from friends. That was six years ago. We started in Hackney Wick because the rent was low, and our first studio was a tiny room where we did screenprinting, dying, sewing, embroidery and calling for appointments to sell our designs. And we got a friend to come in really early on as a saleswoman, because we realised that it wasn’t enough just to design.”

These days, Nicola and her partners fly to New York and Los Angeles once a month, they go to Australia every three months, and take regular day trips around Europe to sell their work, as well as visiting the British retailers such as Marks & Spencer and Top Shop that are major clients for their designs. “The buyers know what they want,” Ruth assured me with wry smile, as she illustrated the routine that permits the customer to choose, holding up an armful of samples and letting them drop one-by-one in the manner of Bob Dylan and his cue cards in “Don’t Look Back.”

As quickly as patterns get sold, the case must be filled up again with new ones, and this is the endless task that preoccupies everyone at Pattern Textiles. “The crux of what we do is to keep the collection fresh. So we have to be constantly looking at new ideas.” admitted Ruth.“We look at what’s on the catwalk to understand the trends, and it’s very enjoyable working with all the designers here and seeing what they produce,” said Nicola, extending Ruth’s thought, “but we also go down Brick Lane to the vintage shops for inspiration too.”

Around a dozen women work at Pattern Textiles and – as I spoke with Ruth and Nicola – elsewhere in the room, sales staff were discussing feedback from buyers, while all around us the business of producing more patterns continued. One woman in a bold print dress, working at designing animal skin prints, confessed to me that she never wore patterns until she came to work here, while her neighbour showed me a range of new Ikat designs she had just created, convincing as if they had always existed. In the midst of all this industry and shrewd thinking to conjure the designs that will draw an emotional response, capturing women’s imaginations and selling clothes, I succumbed to the intangible magic of patterns myself. Mostly abstract, this is an subtle art whose practitioners are barely acknowledged, as if patterns came out of nowhere. Yet patterns are omnipresent and memorable, shaping our experience and perceptions of each other, creating the texture of life and lifting our spirits through their universal language of delight.

Nicola McShane

Silkscreening a sample of a pattern onto a t-shirt.

Charlie Nelson, one of the pattern designers at Pattern Textiles, with some Ikat designs she created.

The team at Pattern Textiles show off examples of their handiwork.

You may also like to read about

A Dress of Spitalfields Silk

and Spitalfields’ most famous textile designer, Anna Maria Garthwaite, in

Stanley Rondeau at the V&A

An Election Entertainment

Telegraph, 30th April. “Police open probe into alleged voter fraud in East London.”

Canvassing for Votes

Independent, 3rd May. “They knock on the door and ask us to give them our ballot papers.”

The Polling

Evening Standard, 2nd May. “Voters forgot how they signed registration forms.”

Chairing the Member

Independent, 3rd May. “Electoral Commission boss fights for job after claims of fraud.”

You may also like to read about

Hogarth at St Bartholomew’s Hospital

At Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen.

Meet the market traders of Hare Marsh, off Cheshire St.

Cockney rhyming slang.

The Whitechapel Bell Foundry includes part of the building of the former Artichoke coaching inn.

Barry the Barber does haircuts in Bedell Coram, Andrew Coram’s antique shop in Commercial St.

Daniel Mendoza, the legendary East End boxer.

Richard Humphries, the Gentleman Boxer.

At Bunhill Fields.

Donald Parsnips, author of Donald Parsnips’ Daily Journal and alter-ego of Adam Dant.

The Duke of Uke, Britain’s only ukulele shop, in Cheshire St.

Bishopsgate follows the line of Ermine St, the Roman road north from the City of London.

Sandra Esqualant, Queen of Spitalfields, landlady of the Golden Heart in Commercial St.

Cockney rhyming slang.

Helmet Row, off Old St, was originally part of the ironmongers’ district.

Lenny Hamilton, Jewel Thief.

Angela Flanders, perfumer of Columbia Rd.

The Nags Head in the Hackney Rd, a former coaching inn once frequented by Dick Turpin.

Jeanette Winterson, author of “Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit” and “Sexing the Cherry.”

Andrew McCaldon, writer and editor of the popular Dogs of Spitalfields series.

The Phoenix Claw from The Signs of Old London.

Favourite Pie & Mash Shops.

The Cries of London.

Nicholas Culpeper wrote “The Complete Herbal” while living in Red Lion St, Spitalfields.

At Sandys Row Synagogue.

The Sun in Splendour, symbol of the Bishopsgate Institute, home to archivist Stefan Dickers.

The Jolly Sailor, a former pub in Ratcliffe.

Andy Willoughby, Gardener at Arnold Circus.

This is the full line of “The Snows Have Fled” (Diffugere Nives) by Horace, from which the phrase “Umbra Sumus” upon the sundial in Fournier St comes. It translates as  -“We are but dust and shadow.”

Images copyright © Paul Bommer

You may like to see the first selection of

Paul Bommer’s Delft Tiles

Woodgrainer, Ian Harper, with a rosewood door he painted in Elder St.

If you should ever require an excuse for a stroll around Spitalfields one Sunday, what could be a more relaxing and gently informative diversion than to take a tour of the doors painted by Ian Harper, the woodgrainer? Your journey commences at the ancient Bell Foundry in the Whitechapel Rd where Ian painted the entire facade with a spectacular mid-oak effect.

“I walked in one day, ten years ago,” Ian told me,“and they asked if I could restore the wood-graining because it was damaged, so I said, ‘Yes,’ and since then I’ve repainted it twice.” The graining here dates from the Victorian era with constant repair over the last century, yet such is Ian’s skill in achieving an authentic effect , you would never guess that any maintenance or repainting has been done.

Mid-oak was an effect commonly used by small businesses and trades that wanted to look solid, Ian revealed to me, whereas more ostentatious effects were the preserve of classy private houses such as you find on the next stop of your walking tour, in Princelet St. At number twenty-four, where Chris Dyson has reconstructed an eighteenth century facade to blend with the rest of the street, he commissioned Ian to paint a dark-oak effect on the wooden frontage, and burr walnut upon his front door and that of his neighbour John Alexander at  number twenty-two. In such close proximity to Brick Lane, Ian was wary that his work might get tagged but, a year later, it remains pristine. “Some of the roughnecks came along to watch me at work and I think I earned respect,” he confided to me with a relieved smile.

Round the corner at Marianna Kennedy‘s showroom and workshop  at three Fournier St, there are a pair of doors in old-oak that Ian has painted and repainted in recent years. “They are much repaired and much loved, patched in keeping with the battered exterior of the house,” Ian admitted, “So many tramps have slept against it and bookbinders battered against it.” Similarly, there is an interior door in mahogany in this house that has been frequently repaired by Ian and coated with multiple coats of Copal varnish to imbue a rich marmalade glow.

Across the marketplace, over in Elder St, you will encounter three beautiful wood-grained front doors displaying contrasting effects – mahogany, rosewood and walnut. Robin Waite, the owner of nine and eleven, commissioned Ian to grain both doors. In each case, Ian was lucky enough to uncover traces of original graining around the edges and regrained them based upon these discoveries, with number nine in mahogany and number eleven in rosewood.

The final stop on your tour in Elder St is Dan Cruickshank’s burr walnut front door, first grained when the house was part of the Isaac Tillard Estate in the early ninetenth century. “It is the most perfect example of traditional graining in Spitalfields” declared Ian, “I’ve repaired parts of it, and occasionally maintain it with new coats of Copal varnish. You can tell it’s early because the style is very loose, very painterly – it’s slightly mad!”

On your walk, you will have wondered at the realism and surrealism of wood graining, learnt to distinguish walnut from rosewood, and maybe you will have succumbed to the paradoxical charm of wood graining which derives from the delight in being deceived by it, even when you know it is fake?

“It’s seen as something expensive today, whereas the whole point of graining done in the past was to put a gloss on poor materials.” Ian explained to me, savouring the irony of the prestige now placed upon wood graining, when once it was a cheap option to fake a bit of class for those who could not afford true quality. Yet it is Ian’s bravura talent that makes his work so fascinating, and the parade of his lush glossy doors in Spitalfields is the public gallery of his mastery. “I’ve done miles of graining for grand interiors, but Spitalfields is where I have most exterior doors.” he assured me proudly.

The mid-oak wood graining on the front of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in the Whitechapel Rd dates from  the Victorian era with regular discreet maintenance and repainting by Ian.

Mark, manager at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, steps outside to admire the wood-graining.

At Chris Dyson’s house, number twenty-four Princelet St, Ian painted dark-oak upon the facade and burr walnut upon the front door.

At John Alexander’s house, number twenty-two Princelet St, Ian painted burr walnut.

At Marianna Kennedy’s showroom, three Fournier St, Ian has painted old-oak which has been patched up and acquired many coats of Copal varnish.

Three Fournier St in old-oak.

Interior door in Marianna Kennedy’s showroom in mahogany.

At nine Elder St, Ian painted a mahogany effect inspired by residual fragments of original graining.

At eleven Elder St, Ian painted rosewood in the loose early-nineteenth century style.

Dan Cruickshank steps out of his front door with original walnut wood graining believed to date from the 1840s when the house was part of the Isaac Tillard Estate.

Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman

You may also like to read about

Ian Harper, Wood Grainer

When Leila McAlister commissioned Michael Marriott to design and make a shelf to sell copies of Spitalfields Life at her cafe in Calvert Avenue, it gave me the ideal excuse to walk along the canal to the former Briggs Tarpaulin Factory where Michael has his workshop and pay him a call. Briggs Bros have let their complex of dignified shabby nineteenth century buildings to an assortment of small trades and craftsmen, thereby retaining the chaotic working life of the place, and at the heart of this warren of diverse enterprises is Michael’s den. Anyone would break a into a large smile, as I did, to step into this extraordinarily crowded yet meticulously organised space with myriad bicycle parts hanging from the ceiling and every corner crammed with scraps of salvaged timber, metal and plastic, leaving just enough space for the pair of small workbenches where Michael realises his designs.

With the restless animated energy of a teen and the eccentricity of a favourite uncle, Michael is a designer who excels in what I call “wonky modernism.”  In other words, he creates designs of pared-down functionalism in which their form is dictated by their utility and the use of materials is unapologetic, yet as objects they possess something else as well – an undefinable idiosyncrasy which gives his pieces their unmistakeable personality. Michael is no mere bricoleur though, he teaches furniture design at the Royal College of Art and is internationally recognised for his innovative work. So, as you can imagine, I could not wait to discover what the Spitalfields Life shelf was going to look like.

“I always made things when I was a child, but once my mum took me to the Ford factory at Dagenham and I saw this metal pressing machine that was the size of a house and I was totally entranced by it,” Michael told me, recalling his childhood in Essex, when I asked him how it all began. “I’m quite an unusual designer,” he admitted, “in that I make my own designs and I enjoy it.” Trained as a cabinetmaker at the London College of Furniture, Michael  recognises that the making can inform the design and that if, for example, you are designing something with a handle then you need to know how it feels to touch. No Luddite, Michael commonly  works on a computer and then takes the idea into the workshop to refine it further through realising it in three dimensions.

“I work in lots of different ways, I have designed furniture for SCP on-and-off for fifteen years, I do quite a bit of exhibition design, and lot of other things that are less easy to describe.” Michael explained to me enigmatically. Anyone that has been to Leila’s Shop will recognise the cafe tables that he designed and the counter made of an old chest of drawers. He is especially adept at using found materials and creating poetic juxtapositions in which materials of acknowledged quality such as oak or douglas fir are set in unexpectedly sympathetic contrast with plywood or pegboard, revealing a democratic, craftsman’s appreciation of their relative merit and utility.

For the Spitalfields Life shelf, Michael salvaged some oak drawer fronts that were once part of a thirties chest of drawers, which he artfully mis-matched with some douglas fir scavenged from a packing case and combined with a piece of mdf perforated by two mysterious holes that were the result of its previous use. As we spoke, Michael set to work trimming the pieces to size and placing them side by side to appreciate their contrasts while contemplating the angles of the supports, the proportions of the differently-sized shelves and making all the subtle judgements which would result in a piece with its own consistent rationale. “I often reuse things that have been discarded, I think it’s more interesting to reuse than to recycle.” he said, absorbed in his occupation.

Later, I met with Michael at Leila’s Cafe when he was installing the shelves. At once, it became apparent both that the design fitted the contours of the room and that the individual shelf for copies stacked on their side, counter-balanced the other shelves displaying the book face out. The spectrum of mid-brown wood tones complemented the deep blue of David Pearson’s book jacket nicely and, once in place, the shelf looked as if it had always been there – a continuum with the cafe tables and all the other woodwork in the room.

Then Michael climbed on his Mini-Moulton bicycle with a shopping basket strapped onto the back and, looking for all the world like a latter-day Professor Branestawm in a baseball cap and aviators, he gave an extravagant wave as a flourish and peddled away up Calvert Avenue.

“With the restless animated energy of a teen and the eccentricity of a favourite uncle”

Installation for Tokyo Design Week, 1999. Fifty lampshades hanging from a one metre square grid, and accompanied by a soundtrack of Morecambe and Wise performing ‘Bring Me Sunshine’.

Reworking of the Windsor Chair, manufactured in solid ash in Hereford, and available in natural ash or white finish, with red dipped feet, 2009.

Coffee table with float glass top and four turned beech legs attached directly through the glass top, 1995.

Shoe storage unit. Aluminium and re-claimed wood panels, with painted top and oak feet, 2009.

Drawer unit constructed from birch plywood, pegboard and Spanish fruit crates, 1996.

Side table made in Spain with paella dish, 2011.

Chopping board for Polish foods producer, Topolski, for chopping and serving Polish sausages in particular, 2006.

Michael fits the Spitalfields Life bookshelf at Leila’s Cafe.

Michael’s design for the Spitalfields Life bookshelf.

The Spitalfields Life bookshelf at Leila’s Cafe – note the third hole added for compositional effect.

Spitalfields Life Contributing Artist Paul Bommer has painted one hundred and twenty faux delft tiles that will be displayed in the living room of an eighteenth century house in a new exhibition – opening at 15 Wilkes St on Friday night and running through next weekend. Paul’s sly witty style is perfectly at home on tiles, bringing an extra level of humour and sophistication to this appealing vernacular art.“I’ve always been fond of delft tiles and the graphics of that period,” he admitted to me, “it’s like Folk Art at the low end, a popular medium illustrating the characters people knew and the things they used.” Many of the tiles that Paul has created were directly inspired by stories on Spitalfields Life and it is my pleasure to publish a selection here. Be sure to come along to Wilkes St and see the rest for yourself.

The former Whitechapel Mount, claimed by some to be a primeval earthwork of mystical significance, by others to be a spoil heap from digging the City’s eastern defences during the English Civil War.

The Cobblers of Spitalfields

At the Fish Harvest Festival

Rob Ryan, Papercut Artist

Steve Benbow, Urban Beekeeper

Stanley Rondeau, Huguenot

Shakespearian Actors at St Leonard’s Shoreditch

James Ince & Sons, Umbrella Makers

With Jack London at Frying Pan Alley

Tubby Isaac’s Jellied Eels Stall

The Ceremony of the Widow’s Buns at Bow

Ben Eine, Street Artist

The Ship & Blue Ball in Boundary St where they planned the Great Train Robbery.

Peter Hardwicke, London’s last signwriter working by eye.

Jewish Soup Kitchen, Brune St

John Twomey Fencing Champion & landlord of the Ten Bells.

Alex Guarneri, Cheesemonger at Andruoet

The Grapes at Limehouse.

At Three Colts Lane

The owl is the symbol of the town of Holt in Norfolk, home of Old Town, the clothing company that hold regular fittings for their London customers in Spitalfields.

The Duke of Wellington

In Rhyming Slang “Butcher’s Hook” = Look

In Rhyming Slang “Titfer” = Hat

You may also like to read about

Simon Pettet’s Tiles at Dennis Severs’ House

A Fireplace in Fournier St

John Moyr Smith’s Tiles