Typefounders Of East London
Richard Ardagh, author of Type Archived, A visual journey through typographic history introduces the typefounders of East London.
Join typographer and designer Richard Ardagh for an illustrated talk this Saturday November 14th at 3:15pm at the Bloomsbury Jamboree about the people, places and processes behind East London’s remarkable typefounding history.
Click here to book for Richard Ardagh’s talk
The Caslon tomb at St Luke’s, Old St
Typography can be thought of as the vehicle of words, giving them both form and voice. It is easy to take for granted how quickly we can compose and spread words today when, for centuries, type was manufactured as countless millions of individual physical components, a prerequisite for making the printed word possible.
East London played a huge part in the development of the typefounding industry, acting as a crucible (to use a relevant term) from which came many firsts: styles such as Sans-serif, Slab-serif (or Antique) and Clarendon were all the innovations of London typefounders. Even the screen typeface that you are reading (Georgia by Matthew Carter, 1993) was heavily inspired by the work of punchcutter Richard Austin, born in Finsbury, 1756.
England’s earliest typographer was Wynkyn de Worde, a German immigrant, who came to London around 1480 at the request of William Caxton to help improve his venture running the country’s first printing press. De Worde subsequently established his own press at Fleet St, which has forever after been synonymous with the print trade, and was buried there at St Bride’s Church. (The neighbouring St Bride Foundation is the custodian of much of the area’s rich printing heritage to this day.) But it was another 240 years before the skills necessary to produce original type designs were seen in London.
To create a new fount (font) required several significant stages: A punchcutter would painstakingly engrave master letters in steel, a craft demanding both an outstanding level of skill and artistic scrutiny. Every letter, numeral and symbol had to be cut individually, and replicated again for each size of type produced. Punches were used to strike a block of copper or brass, forming a matrix from which type could be cast. The matrix was fitted to a mould which was adjusted to match the width of the character. Casting could then begin by pouring molten typemetal (an alloy of lead, tin and antimony) into the cavity, which solidified on contact, then breaking the mould apart to release the sort (a single piece of type). In this way, repeated many times over, slowly an endless supply of type could be amassed.
Early English printers had relied on type imported from the Low Countries until, in 1722, an enterprising engraver transitioned into typefounding. A blue plaque at 22-23 Chiswell St marks the site of William Caslon’s pioneering foundry, run from this address for nearly 200 years. Caslon’s masterfully cut Roman and italic types established a uniquely English style for the first time and remain highly regarded – hence the adage, ‘when in doubt, use Caslon’. In the decade prior to Chiswell St, Caslon’s premises were at Ironmonger Row (now Helmet Row) opposite St Luke’s Church, where the family tomb can be seen, its raised stone chest clearly visible from Old St.
As the print trade flourished in the courts and alleys around Fleet St and spread beyond, typefounders situated their businesses nearby. The ward of Cripplegate had been home to early foundries such as Grover and Mitchell before Caslon. Later, the Bristol firm of Edmund Fry relocated there, giving the name Type St to an undeveloped lane, proudly listed on the title page of their specimen books (the street now forms part of Moor Lane).
A short walk away, the Fann St Foundry, established by Robert Thorne and later passing to William Thoroughgood and Robert Besley, occupied the premises at numbers 2, 4 and 6. This street name prevails and the site is now occupied by the Blake Tower. A plaque above the shopfronts opposite, where Aldersgate becomes Goswell Rd, records a now-absent drinking fountain erected in Besley’s memory but has no mention of the foundry.
As typefounding firms grew into more substantial enterprises their proprietors began to hold prominent positions within the City of London. Besley was an Alderman and went on to serve as Lord Mayor (1869-70). Typefounder Vincent Figgins, ‘an amiable and worthy character, and generally respected’, was a Common Councilman for the ward of Farringdon Without and his son James became an Alderman and MP. The ‘VJF’ monogram of their foundry is still visible on the iron railings in front of the Grade II listed building at Ray St in Clerkenwell.
Talbot Baines Reed, known as a writer of school stories for boys, is a figure that looms large in the world of typefounding. Reed inherited the Fann St Foundry in 1881 and went on to write a monumental account of the trade’s history. Whether or not he acquired the practical skills of casting type himself, we can certainly be grateful for his work cataloguing the foundry’s materials and identifying items of special historical interest in his ‘cabinet of curios’. Reed’s premature death at the age of forty-one is commemorated on the family tomb with a large Celtic cross close to the Church St entrance to Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington.
The completion of Regent’s Canal in 1820 meant an easily accessible supply of heavy materials and lumber. Furniture-makers and wood trades flourished in Hoxton, including ‘printer’s joiners’ such as Gould & Reeves. The firm operated from Wenlock St where, as well as producing large wooden type for posters, they made the cabinets to house it and other furniture required by printing offices. And by 1900, as light industry spread further eastwards, the heirs of the Caslon foundry would open a factory at Rothbury Rd in Hackney Wick that employed over a hundred workers.
By the turn of the twentieth century, typesetting was undergoing a revolution. Automated solutions were introduced that enabled printers to break their reliance on a huge workforce of compositors (who set the type cast by traditional foundries by hand) and replace them with new typecasting machinery.
The Monotype Corporation, pioneers of this technology, still chose to locate their headquarters in the time-honoured district (Monotype’s building was at 43 Fetter Lane, just off Fleet St, until it was destroyed by a bomb in 1941 during the Blitz). But the coming of this new way of servicing the print industry brought dramatic changes and rendered the practices of the traditional foundries archaic, even though a small number continued trading for a few more decades. London’s last active typefoundry was Stevens, Shanks & Sons Ltd at 89 Southwark St, who were still casting type into the seventies.
Thankfully, unlike in many other countries, the materials of Britain’s preeminent typefounding industry were not lost forever when later technologies began to take hold. Having eventually all been absorbed by Stephenson Blake & Co of Sheffield, the artefacts of the traditional foundries mentioned here, along with the working hot-metal plant of the Monotype Corporation and Robert DeLittle’s York wood letter factory, were rescued in the nineties and held at the Type Archive in Stockwell. Unfortunately, although a hub of activity for over thirty years, it closed in 2023, following the death of its driving force, Sue Shaw (1932-2020).
The majority of the National Typefounding Collection is now in the care of the Science Museum. But before materials were removed from the Type Archive, where I was a volunteer, I managed to document some highlights which are presented in my book Type Archived.
M sort (piece of type) cast from a hand-mould
Stages of typefounding: punch, matrix
Stages of typefounding: mould, type
Caslon’s brass patterns for casting large type from sand, c.1770 (photograph copyright Andra Nelki)
Helmet Row, off Old St, where William Caslon established his first type foundry in 1727
Title page of Edmund Fry’s 1816 type specimen book showing the firm’s Type St address
Thorowgood’s Four-line Pica Ornamented matrices, 1821
Figgins’ Five Lines Pica, German Text, from the foundry’s 1815 type specimen
Figgins’ Letter Foundry in Ray St, Clerkenwell
Vincent Figgins’ initials are still to be seen upon the iron work on the front of the letter foundry
Monotype Gill Sans matrices (photograph copyright Andra Nelki)
Click here to buy a copy of Type Archived by Richard Ardagh
The definitive account of the legendary Type Archive provides a stunning visual tour of traditional typefounding, tracing the origins of typography and the printed word.
Founded in London in 1992, the Type Archive brought together some eight million artefacts that tell the story of typography and printing. Now, for the first time, a new book by long-serving Type Archive volunteer Richard Ardagh sheds light on the organisation’s extraordinary materials, celebrating their significance and importance to both the history of art and engineering.
Type Archived presents the typographic treasures that made this possible, from the engraved punches (master letters) and matrices (dies for casting), to the letterpress type and printing presses that put ink to paper. Inside the book, these items have been arranged into chapters by material: iron, steel, copper, brass, bronze, lead, wood, and paper.
Alongside specially commissioned photography, the book features a detailed summary of the trials and achievements of the Archive, an essay on the techniques of typefounding, a glossary of terms and detailed image captions describing the objects, their designers and uses.
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Pearl Binder In Whitechapel
Pearl Binder
Lou Taylor, youngest daughter of the artist and writer Pearl Binder, is giving a talk about the extraordinary life and work of this pioneering artist, writer and journalist at this year’s Bloomsbury Jamboree at the Art Workers’ Guild. Click here to book for Lou Taylor’s lecture at 2pm on Saturday 14th November
Bill the Ostler
Pearl Binder came to Whitechapel in 1925 and lived in a hayloft in Spread Eagle Yard while studying at the Central School of Art. Binder was a life-long socialist, whose political beliefs were informed by her formative experiences in the East End.
Below you can read excerpts from her pen portrait of Bill the Ostler who, with his wife Emmie, was Pearl Binder’s neighbour in Spread Eagle Yard. It was originally included in her book Odd Jobs published in 1935. This is a plain story, revealing the effects of the shift from horsepower to the petrol engine upon the life of a modest couple with little control over their destinies. A tale of the shifting labour market as a consequence of industrial and technological change that became all too familiar as the century wore on but no less devastating for those at the mercy of these changes.
Pearl Binder’s self-effacing protagonists, like Arnold Bennett’s dignified characters, draw us to empathise with feelings that are all the more poignant for being understated or withheld.
‘Bill began work as a butter-slapper in the local branch of the Home and Colonial. Later he drifted into driving vans for one of the City straw merchants. After twenty-five years of van-driving, his feet had become so crippled that the Governor gave him the job of Ostler instead.
As Ostler, Bill, together with his wife Emmie, was sent to live in the horse-keeper’s cottage in the Governor’s straw yard. He applied himself to his new job with patient industry, spreading his affection for his own horse over twelve. His duties consisted in feeding and grooming the twelve cart-horses, cleaning the stables after the last load of hay had been weighed and stacked in the hay-loft and acting as a caretaker when the office was closed. He received a small wage and lived rent-free.
The proud heraldic eagle, which gave the Yard its name, spread its stone wings above the big clock in the north wall of the Yard. Over a hundred years ago, the clock had stopped at twenty-five minutes past nine. The Yard had once been the inn yard of the old Spread Eagle Inn.
The sweet smell of the hay in the lofts and the peaceful cooing of the pigeons in the Yard seemed so remote from the cosmopolitan roaring of the City, just outside the gate, that Emmie used to imagine herself in the country. In the cool of the evening, Bill would take his stumpy pipe and sit outside the Yard, in the door-way of the big gate, watching the swirling life of the city go by and resting his aching feet after his day’s work.
He never tired of the endless procession: modish little Jewesses from Whitechapel escorted by bold-eyed sweethearts with bravely padded shoulders, noisy children from Leman Street, their smooth Egyptian heads sticking precociously above English gymnasium tunics and cheap Norfolk suits, sad-eyed Malay sailors on their way to the East India Dock Rd, swarthy turbaned Lascars carrying brand-new cardboard suit-cases, argumentative Irish labourers on their way to Shadwell public houses, silent Chinese from Pennyfields, hurried businessmen from the City, and the rector from St Mary’s.’
‘Early in June, the governor’s clerk informed Bill that the business was closing down and that the Yard was going to be let. The increasing motor traffic was making the sale of hay unprofitable.
The sun shone dazzlingly in the Yard on the day of the auction, and the heavy air, pungent with hay barely stirred. Bill had risen especially early to sweep and sand the Yard. Lovingly he groomed the horses to immaculate satin, and in their fine tails he plaited braids of straw.
The sale began. One by one, Bill led out the gleaming cart-horses for inspection, each with a numbered paper disc newly stuck on its flank. When all the horses had been sold, the carts were quickly knocked down. After that the bales of hay were disposed of in an off-hand manner, as though of little significance.
The Governor said that they could go on living in the cottage, for the time being at least. The Yard itself was not yet sold. In the meantime, they could remain there and keep an eye on the place. But no wages. He advised Bill to apply for the dole. When the dreadful day came to sign on at the Labour Exchange, he was so ashamed and nervous that he could hardly hold the pen in his hand to write.
Emmie tried to be cheerful. She vowed that Bill would soon be in work again. His character and his copperplate handwriting were in his favour. But he was getting on for sixty and his feet were against him. She tried to persuade him to take a walk every day, for the good of his health, across Tower Bridge towards Bermondsey, or in the other direction as far as the Whitechapel Library, where the workless men crowded outside the entrance round the Want ads, displayed under a wire frame.’
‘November saw the hasty installation of a fun fair. The Yard buildings suffered the indignity of orange-coloured paint. The proud stone creature above the silent clock was daubed with aluminium. Ringed round with electric globes, the clock itself stared down from this disguise, its hands fixed immovably at nine-twenty-five. The cottage was festooned with coloured electric lights, and even Emmie’s sandstoned front step, hollowed out by two hundred years of footsteps, was smeared over with silver paint. The whole Yard looked startled and outraged like a dignified old lady forcibly tricked into wearing flashy modern clothes.
The fun fair opened at last. The twentieth century swarmed in from the street and ran riot over the eighteenth. Outside the gate glittered LUNAPARK in red and white electric bulbs, and inside the Yard blazed with coloured points of light, containing here and there a sudden blank where the hasty work had fused. The alley entrance to the Yard was decorated with a row of wildly distorting mirrors, which proved such a big attraction that the gangway was constantly blocked. Bill did not like the invasion. His dignity and his quiet were gone. There was no more smell of horses in the Yard.
The new boss promised to give Bill some sort of job when the fair started. The white faced boy asked Emmie if she could provide him with a bite of dinner each day. He could afford sixpence. Emmie contrived to cook up a daily plateful of meat and vegetables, which the boy fell upon ravenously. In between mouthfuls, he informed her that his father had been dead some years and that he, being the eldest of six children, was the mainstay of his mother. He said he had been at work four years already and was seventeen.
The scattered morsels of food presently attracted swarms of hungry rats, and the boss, cursing at the expense, ordered Bill to put rat poison in all the corners. Bill’s new job was to sweep up the Yard every night when the fair ended and to act as caretaker at all times. Wages one pound a week, less insurance, and the cottage rent free again. Little as it was, he and Emmie were both deeply relieved. It was less than the dole, but more respectable.’
With the loss of his job as an Ostler, separated from his intimate working relationship with horses, Bill became an anachronism of an ancient world, and, in retrospect, the Lunapark funfair reads as both emblematic and prophetic of the modern world. His story is a fable that stands for a million other personal tragedies of dislocation that continue around us today, whenever the lives of small people are sacrificed to big changes beyond their control.
All this Pearl Binder witnessed in the place she first took lodgings when she came to the London as a young woman, the fate of Spread Eagle Yard – the hay yard that became a theme park – was a microcosm of the twentieth century itself.
Bill the Ostler
At The City Lovers’ Bookshop
Julia Harrison of the Silver Locket visited Mireille Galinou at the new City Lovers’ Bookshop which has just opened in Baker St Station.
Julia and Mireille will be in conversation discussing The Creative Future for Independent Bookselling at the Bloomsbury Jamboree this Sunday 15th November at 12:15pm at the Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Sq, WC1N 3AT.
Julia Harrison (formerly of Waterstone’s and Daunt Books) and Mireille Galinou (of the City Lovers’ Bookshop) celebrate the creative new possibilities for independent bookselling, adapting and innovating to challenge the online marketplace by offering a radically different and more personal experience.
At this watershed moment for bookselling, they ask what it can provide and why it matters. Resisting the dominance of online retailing empowered by AI, Julia and Mireille explore the potential for building communities around the experience of reading and viable new kinds of bookshops, encouraging spaces for the exchange of ideas and enthusiasm inspired by book publishing.
Mireille Galinou
Sometimes life takes one in unexpected directions. On retiring from Daunt Books and missing my family of booksellers and local customers, meeting Mireille Gallinou felt like an unexpected gift. We were introduced by the Gentle Author who asked if I might consider joining the forthcoming Bloomsbury Jamboree with an ‘in conversation’ talk with Mireille about the creative possibilities for independent booksellers.
Mireille has worked with the subject of London since she was appointed as a Museum of London curatorial assistant in 1979. She became Curator of Paintings, Prints and Drawings in 1991, and more recently set up a small publishing house, Your London Publishing, specialising in books on London. She is passionate about cities and last week she achieved her dream of opening her City Lovers’ Bookshop, within Baker Street Station in London.
I first met Mireille a few weeks before the shop opened. On arriving on the walkway between the great staircases leading down to the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines, I saw what looked like a small cupboard: undaunted by the fact that the lock was at the top of the door, Mireille, who is tiny, silver-haired, and as I was to discover, determined, produced a small plastic set of steps from her back pack and proceeded to wrestle with the lock. When, eventually the door opened, a cornucopia of delight was revealed: white shelves, with books divided into London districts, including history, travel writing and fiction, together with what will be a changing display of books about a world city: the first one being Tokyo. Mireille’s friend Jiro Osuga, who also designed the signage for the shop, has contributed a set of paintings which speak to his experience of city living. This isn’t just a bookshop, it is an art installation too. It honestly felt like pushing my way through the coats in a wardrobe and finding myself in Narnia.
For Mireille, the learning curve, both in terms of working with London Transport, who has given her the space for a year, and the practicalities of setting up a bookshop, understanding suppliers, and dealing with the technology involved, is a steep one. When I returned last week, and tapped in through the gates, I could see Jiro’s artworks shining like a beacon. The whole space brings me joy: a place not just for quiet contemplation but for conversation too.
A few days’ ago I popped in to see Mireille before the shop opened to find out more about what inspired her to set up her City Lovers’ Bookshop:
‘I think it started with a search for the meaning of life, in a way. That made me think ‘what is it that is important to me now .. what is it that drives me’ and I came up with the city, that’s really when it started: looking for something that was meaningful.
I grew up in Casablanca. My parents emigrated to Morocco when I was one year old. There were no museums or galleries to go to. That was something I discovered much later when I was seventeen and returned to France. Even though I have always enjoyed nature, the city was where we lived. I got to know Western cities and for me London was a kind of case history: I was in a city that was big enough to do all sorts of different things. I went to university in France but it was in London that everything started. It was a kind of miracle really.
I didn’t know for a very long time how things would follow on from one another. Everyone talks about the Renaissance as mastering a sense of space but it is also during the Renaissance that the image of the city emerges in a significant way: a real city, drawn from life. That happens in the sixteenth century and became a real source of passion for me.
The idea of the city led me to set up a cultural club. It was called the London Arts Cafe. The idea was to get together with a group of people for a talk, for an exhibition, for a guided walk. There was always refreshment. I carried tea and cakes on my back. Food is a natural ingredient for bringing people together and to feeling good. The agenda was a cities agenda; creating exhibitions, including in the Baxter Gallery in Cowcross Street in Smithfield. I did it for ten years but I couldn’t do justice to the subject. I could think of no way of scaling it up.
I was a little anxious setting up this bookshop because of the experience of the London Arts Cafe and then my publishing company, It was the distribution of these books which made me think,’ is there a platform for that kind of book?’ and I came to the conclusion that no, there wasn’t one. When I go to the Carnavalet Museum which tells the story of Paris, there is a serious shop. I am always inspired when I go there. There isn’t an equivalent here.’
One of Mireille’s volunteers arrives to do some training, so we bring our conversation to a close:
‘I do everything on a shoestring: I am learning as I go along.’
Mireille has created something entirely new in the ‘City Lovers’ Bookshop’. When being in the city can feel stressful sometimes rather than pleasurable, I find Mireille’s celebration of city living inspiring. When I walk though the door of her bookshop my heart beats faster. She says that sometimes it can feel overwhelming. I am in awe of her achievement and salute her for her passion, her courage and her ability just to keep moving forwards.
Three cheers for the City Lovers’ Bookshop: a tiny jewel inside a busy station. Those who find time to stop and step inside are in for a wonderful surprise.
The City Lovers’ Bookshop is directly opposite the ticket barrier at Baker St
The entrance to the bookshop
Artwork by Jiro Osuga adorns the walls
London books organised by location
Made In London
Mark Brearley is giving an illustrated lecture on the subject of MADE IN LONDON at this year’s BLOOMSBURY JAMBOREE on Sunday November 15th at 11:00 am. CLICK HERE TO BOOK
Contrary to popular belief, London continues to be a city of manufacturing and MADE IN LONDON by Carmel King & Mark Brearley with additional text by Clare Dowdy, presents a wealth of inspiring examples, many of which have been running for generations – it is my delight to publish this East London selection today.
Blackhorse Lane Ateliers, Walthamstow
Blackhorse Lane Ateliers were established in 2015 by Han Ates, a second-generation Londoner with Turkish-Kurdish ancestry and a family that has deep roots in the textile industry. These days, the twenty-three staff produce more than ten thousand pairs of high quality denim jeans per year. Ates and BLA are part of a rapid revival of tailoring and garment production in London, with the city now hosting around three hundred workrooms and factories whose output is fast expanding.
Freed of London, Hackney
Freed of London is the only company in the world that hand makes pointe shoes for the mass market, available off the shelf. It also custom-makes shoes for individual dancers, and its first famous customer was the prima ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn. The main production site has been in Well Street in Hackney since the seventies. There its eighty members of staff include twelve makers who are each able to produce around forty pairs a day. Next to the pointe shoe workshop is a bigger workshop where ballroom, Latin, tap, character and stage shoes are made.
Kashket & Partners, Tottenham
Beefeaters, colonels and royalty get their ceremonial and parade uniforms from a factory on a industrial site where the sixty staff produce more than five thousand bespoke items a year, from scarlet tunics and riding breeches to ladies’ regimental ball gowns. The fourth-generation business describes itself as Europe’s biggest bespoke tailoring factory that hand makes from scratch. There is some competition from Savile Row, ‘but we are bigger’ says Nathan Kasket. The Ministry of Defence requires the business to be no more than twenty miles from Wellington Barracks, in case of emergencies.
James Ince, Bethnal Green
Richard Ince’s family started making umbrellas in 1805. He’s the sixth generation, having taken on leadership in 1998. Today the nine strong business makes around seventeen thousand umbrellas a year in its Bethnal Green workshop. Around seventy per cent of production goes to central London retailers, though over the years they have adjusted to fashion and to supply different industries. Extra-big or specially designed umbrellas have been produced to suit welders on the railways or for hotel doormen, newspaper vendors or bookmakers. In a production of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days a James Ince umbrella burst into flames on the London stage every night.
Barber Wilson & Co, Wood Green
When property developer Jeremy Bigland heard that the premises of Barber Wilson & Co. were for sale, he was initially interested in the site as a potential residential project. But when he visited London’s oldest tap factory he changed his mind, and in 2018 he and his business partner Andy Warren bought the business. Today Bigland is adamant that the business is not going anywhere. ‘for me, it was important to keep the heritage of the company, in London, alive’, he says. Twenty-five London staff roll forward this hundred-and-twenty-three-year-old business that is based in the factory they built in 1905.
Bellerby & Co, Stoke Newington
In Bellerby & Co Globemakers’ workshop, a team of twenty-five make around seven hundred globes per year. Each sphere is made in-house from resins, Perspex and plaster of Paris sometimes inlaid with hessian fibres, using a mould created by Formula 1 fabricators. The pieces of world map – known as gores – are carefully glued to the globe, then painters apply layers of watercolour to represent oceans, mountain ranges and vegetation. It can take as long as eight weeks to paint a large one. Many of the globes are bespoke, and more than half are exported.
BIZ Karts, Brimsdown
BIZ Karts, founded in 1994, are one of the leading go-kart producers. Almost all stages of production take place in their forty-five thousand sq ft factory, from the manufacture of chassis and components to the finishing touches on the karts. Each chassis is fully hand-welded and straightened before the chassis is painted and the kart’s components are added in the assembly section. Currently around twelve hundred are made each year by the forty-strong business, and they continue to grow. A sales office opened in Florida in 2017, and now roughly forty per cent of all karts are exported to the Americas.
Electro Signs, Walthamstow
Welshman Richard Bracey came to London, learnt the neon-sign trade and in 1952 set up his own business making neon advertising signs, including the enormous glitzy ones for Soho’s cabarets such as Raymond Revuebar. Matthew Bracey, grandson of the founder, runs the Walthamstow business today, with a team of sixteen they make hundreds of signs each year, using both neon and LED. The booming London film industry is a major source of work, and the factory’s creations can be spotted in Superman, Batman and James Bond films, as well as Mission Impossible, Lost in Space and many more.
Jochen Holz, Stratford
Jochen Holtz produces organically shaped lampworked glassware. He works alone in his studio in Stratford, surrounded by tools, bunsen burners, oxygen bottles, variously sized glass tubes in boxes, two kilns and a workbench. Before setting up on his own, Holtz spent three years training as a lampworker to make scientific laboratory equipment. He works with borosilicate glass, heating it using torches, giving texture and shape to some pieces by pressing the molten glass against surfaces such as perforated metal or burnt wood.
Cox London, Tottenham
In their building on the Millmead Industrial Estate, Cox London designs and makes highly sculptural pieces of lighting and furniture. Every piece is commissioned, and around ninety per cent of production is based on the line of products shown on the company’s website. Most commissions come from interior designers furnishing private homes. The business has its own foundry within the twenty-thousand sq ft factory, so they can cast bronze, and they have hefty forging machines. At the twelve noisy workstations, items are hammered, wrought, welded and assembled.
Aimer Products, Brimsdown
Glass blowers Aimer Products has its origins in the early 1900s, originally a business that pioneered X-ray tube production in a small workshop off Tottenham Court Rd. They have been in Brimsdown since the mid-1990s. The main focus had been petrochemical glassware – products used in the testing of crude oil and aviation fuels around the world – but in 2021 they branched out, adding a new business, Leverint, which designs and makes glass lighting. There are now plans to bring in a handful more people to the te-strong business, to work on Leverint as it enjoys significant success.
Kaymet, Peckham
This seventy-five-year-old business produces deluxe anodised aluminium trays and trolleys. Around twenty-five thousand trays per year emerge from their factory and are sent to forty countries. In the heyday of the business, sixty years ago, there were not far off two hundred people. In 2013, the business nearly faded away but since then turnover has tripled. The company bought a home for itself in Peckham, and today it employs a dozen who are racing to keep up with burgeoning demand.
Grant Macdonald, Borough
With eighteen staff, Grant Macdonald are one of the biggest silversmithing workshops in the Capital, producing bespoke objets, clocks, trophies and ceremonial swords. They are based in a glazed twenty-first-century building in Borough, where a team of craftspeople mix new technology and tradition. From a concept, a prototype is 3D-printed and shown to the customer. A model of the whole item, or of separate elements, is 3D-printed in wax, and then cast in sterling silver or gold. If there are separate elements, these are welded, soldered and bolted together to create the final piece, which is then polished, plated or lacquered.
William Say & Co, Bermondsey
In a side street near the Old Kent Rd, cans for Fortnum & Mason’s Turkish delight and Myland’s paint are rolling off the production line. William Say & Co’s factory stands on a vast site for Inner London. Inside, a high-speed Soudronic machine turns sheets of tin-plated steel into cylinders, which are then fitted with bases and a variety of lids. Fifty shop-floor staff make eight million items per year. The cans are filled with anything from cakes to paint, polish and aircraft fuel. William Say stamps the bases of its tins with messaging about being made in London using the site’s solar power, and being hundred per cent recyclable.
The Posticherie, Stoke Newington
Catriona Lim’s wig and hairpiece workshop, The Posticherie, is thriving because it provides for one of the many niche needs of London’s vibrant theatre and film economy. Established in 2013 the business is one of the newer ones amongst the city’s cluster. The Stoke Newington location is close enough to London’s theatreland, and many filmmakers, to make it easy to meet clients for fittings. The increasing number of high-definition films – which have higher resolution – has led to good looking hair becoming more important, and hence hairpiece requirements have become more exacting.
Gavin Coyle Studio, Walthamstow
Gaving Coyle runs one of London’s growing number of bespoke and small-batch furniture workshops. For several decades this type of making was in steep decline, but now it is on the up again and today there are at least two hundred and fifty businesses doing this kind of work in the city. Coyle’s is a small set up, just three people in a former car mechanics workshop in Walthamstow. They carry out about nine big fit-out projects a year, with smaller jobs filling in the gaps, and a sideline making items such as the Chirp bird sculpture that is sold through shops including Heal’s and Twentytwentyone.
Hitch Mylius, Ponders End
Hitch Mylius have been making simple, superbly designed and well crafted furniture since 1971. The founders, designers Tristram and Hazel Mylius, acted on frustration with the lack of modern design in British-made furniture, compared with output from Italy and Scandinavia. Of the company’s thirty-four staff, around twenty-five are in production, making five to six thousand pieces a year, from footstools to corner sofas. The first Hitch Mylius design – the MH11 seating system – was a success in Liberty in the early seventies, and it is still sold today as HM18.
Nichols Bros, Walthamstow
On a quiet residential street, behind a grass-green door, hundreds of wooden stair parts are made each day. Inside the floor is thick with sawdust, wood chips fly from the machinery and the walls are adorned with spindles. Nichols Bros’ workshop has changed little since it opened in 1949. ‘It’s very old-fashioned’, says co-owner Geoff Nichols. With the firm’s specialist machinery, including a hundred-year-old wood-twisting machine, Geoff believes, ‘we’re the last proper woodturners left in London, because we can tackle any woodturning project’. That could be a doorknob or ‘an enormous great column for a front door’.
Wyvern Bindery, Hoxton
Craft bookbinderies have been declining in number, and of the dozen or so left in the capital, Wyvern is unusual in that it has a shopfront, so passers-by can see work in progress. It all happens behind the big shop window of a long, deep unit in Hoxton, to where the bindery moved in 2020 from Clerkenwell. At the back of the bindery are big, wide workbenches, with shallow drawers holding traditional marble endpapers. Elsewhere are stacked rolls of leather (mostly goatskin), fake suedes, and cloths used for covering hardback books.
Tate & Lyle Sugars, Silvertown
In buildings and tanks of different shapes, sizes and ages spread across a twenty-hectare site, fifty per cent of the sugar sold in UK shops and eighty per cent of the sugar used in restaurant kitchens and canteens is refined. Mechanisation has led to the elimination of many repetitive jobs. These days the sugar refinery has four hundred and fifty workers, and Tate & Lyle Sugars has a further three hundred support and office staff across their two London Thameside sites. The output is greater than it was in the fifties, when it was the biggest cane-sugar refinery in the world and employed eight thousand people, and substantial investment is further increasing capacity.
Diespeker & Co, Bermondsey
Terrazzo, which originated in sixteenth century Italy, is made of marble, quartz, granite, ceramic or glass chippings set into a cement or resin binder. It is either poured in situ or precast into slabs, to make flooring, wall tiles, worktops, reception desks and furniture. At Diespeker & Co’s Bermondsey base it is even turned into fountains, fireplaces and plinths. Of the company’s forty staff, twenty are on the factory floor. The bespoke workshop has not changed in years. It is known as the ‘green shed’, and uses traditional methods to hand make terrazzo items using each client’s chosen aggregate mix and dye colour.
London Stone Carving, Peckham
Since 2015, London Stone Carving has been specialising in high-end stone carving. They are near the Old Kent Rd in a sturdy brick and concrete sixties unit with lifting equipment at the front and good yard access. The four-strong team take on commissions for lots of architectural restoration work such as the big Soane roses for Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing. Being based in London is a key selling point as clients want to come to the studio, because half the enjoyment for them is seeing the process. Work includes replacement carvings for old churches and other historic buildings, and production on behalf of artists and sculptors.
Wax Atelier, Poplar
Five years ago, two designer/maker friends – Lola Lely and Tesenia Thibault-Picazo decided to collaborate on an experimental project, and picked wax as their material. After making their own tools, sourcing beeswax from a neighbour, and teaching themselves to dip candles by watching YouTube videos, the two fell in love with the process and the product. Today Wax Atelier products, produced by the company’s staff of ten, are stocked by over two hundred retailers worldwide. They have recently moved from Barking to a larger factory space at Poplar Works and they plan to expand into homewares.
Photographs copyright © Carmel King
You may also like to read about
Bloomsbury Jamboree Lectures 2026
You are invited to our annual BLOOMSBURY JAMBOREE which runs from 10:30am – 4:30pm, Saturday 14th & Sunday 15th November at Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Sq, WC1N 3AT.
We are showing the work of our favourite makers and are proud to present these accompanying lectures. Tickets include entry to the Jamboree.
SUZANNE COOPER: PAINTINGS UNDER THE SPARE ROOM BED
Join author Lucy Hughes-Hallett for an illustrated talk exploring the life, work and rediscovery of Suzanne Cooper, an important modernist artist. Lucy will be in conversation with Phil Abel of Hand & Eye.
Cooper studied at London’s Grosvenor School of Modern Art where she developed a distinctive style as a painter and wood engraver. Her work was exhibited at leading London galleries during the thirties, attracting the attention of critics and the influential collector and gallerist Lucy Wertheim.
Her artistic career was interrupted by the Second World War. Then, following marriage and the birth of her children, Cooper largely abandoned her art, leaving many of her paintings stored under a bed, but her work has since been recognised anew, bringing her remarkable career to wider attention.
Click here to book for Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s lecture at 11am on Saturday 14th November
SARAH AINSLIE’S WOMEN AT WORK : EAST END PORTRAITS 1992-2025
Photographer Sarah Ainslie introduces Women at Work, her long-term project documenting the lives and labour of women in the East End, published by Spitalfields Life Books accompanied by an exhibition at Four Corners, Bethnal Green opening on 20th November.
Sarah celebrates the contribution of female labour in exuberant photographs that capture the passion and struggle of the working life, forming a panoramic survey of social change over four decades.
These pictures are a vital testament to the indomitable spirit of women whose work is often unrecognised but who shape the fabric of our lives, sustaining and binding together communities with their warmth, labour and fellowship.
Click here to book for Sarah Ainslie’s lecture at 12:15pm on Saturday 14th November
PEARL BINDER: ART, SOCIALISM & SATIRE
Lou Taylor, Pearl Binder’s youngest daughter, talks about the extraordinary life and work of this pioneering artist, writer and journalist.
Born into a poor Jewish family in Manchester, Binder moved to Whitechapel in 1925 with little money or personal connections. Already a committed socialist, she become a graphic artist, journalist, BBC television personality and passionate traveller who visited Moscow in 1933
Her lithographs, drawings and collages combine sharp social observation with satire. She worked throughout her life, including a final series of portrait prints depicting London’s Punks in all their finery. Binder’s work was recently featured in the exhibition Comrades in Art: the AIA 1933–1943 at Towner Gallery, Eastbourne.
Click here to book for Lou Taylor’s lecture at 2pm on Saturday 14th November
TYPEFOUNDERS OF EAST LONDON: THE MAKING OF THE PRINTED WORD
Join typographer and designer Richard Ardagh for an illustrated talk about the people, places and processes behind East London’s remarkable type-founding history, originating influential typeface styles including sans-serif, slab-serif and Clarendon. Richard will introduce the area’s leading typefounders and foundries, including William Caslon, Vincent Figgins and William Thorowgood.
The talk draws on Richard’s recently published book, Type Archived: A Visual Journey Through Typographic History. He will describe the tools, techniques and surviving artefacts that reveal the story of an industry which transformed the way we communicate.
Click here to book for Richard Ardagh’s lecture at 3:15pm on Saturday 14th November
MADE IN LONDON: THE CITY’S MANUFACTURING SCENE TODAY
Manufacturer and urbanist Mark Brearley gives illustrated talk about what is made in London these days and by who, in the filigree of factories that are fighting to keep a foothold in our city.
Discover which industries are strong, and changing, and burgeoning against the odds, as well as which are threatened by waves of expulsion, the lack of support and ongoing social-narrowing.
Mark will draw on his 2022 book Made in London (co-authored with photographer Carmel King) with some updates on the story. Advocating for Kaymet, his own aluminium tray and trolley factory in Peckham, Mark is passionate about the necessity of embedded industries in cities.
Click here to book for Mark Brearley’s lecture at 11am on Sunday 15th November
THE CREATIVE FUTURE OF INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLING
Julia Harrison (formerly of Waterstone’s and Daunt Books) and Mireille Galinou (of the new City Lovers’ Bookshop) celebrate the creative new possibilities for independent bookselling, adapting and innovating to challenge the online marketplace by offering radically different and more personal experiences.
At this watershed moment for bookselling, they ask what it can provide and why it matters.
Resisting the dominance of online retailing empowered by AI, Julia and Mireille explore the potential for building communities around the experience of reading and viable new kinds of bookshops, encouraging spaces for the exchange of ideas and enthusiasm inspired by book publishing.
Click here to book for Julia Harrison and Mireille Galinou’s talk at 12:15pm on Sunday 15th November
MARK & SPARKS! ENID MARX: PATTERN, POPULAR ART & MODERN DESIGN
Art historian and writer Alan Powers talks about the life and work of the remarkable designer, printmaker, illustrator and collector Enid Marx.
Marx worked in textiles, book illustration, industrial design, printmaking and popular art. Best known for her woven designs for London Underground upholstery, she also created hand-blocked fabrics, wallpapers, book jackets, stamps, laminates and ceramics, bringing together modern design, folk tradition and a lively sense of pattern. Her work combined originality with a strong belief in the social purpose of design.
Drawing on his book Enid Marx: The Pleasures of Pattern, Alan Powers will explore Marx’s extraordinary career and the rich network of artists, designers and makers of which she was a part.
Click here to book for Alan Powers’ lecture at 2pm on Sunday 15th November
LOOK DOWN! THE COAL HOLE COVERS OF LONDON
Look down as you walk through London and you will find thousands of coal hole covers set into pavements, doorsteps and courtyards. Once used to deliver coal directly into the cellars of London homes, these practical features are also miniature examples of Victorian design and craftsmanship.
In his illustrated talk, art teacher, ceramicist and coal hole enthusiast Simon Turner explores the history of coal hole covers, the foundries and designs behind them, and where some of the most interesting examples may be found.
Simon will also discuss his project of taking casts from selected coal hole covers and transforming them into ceramic bowls.
Click here to book for Simon Turner’s lecture at 3:15pm on Sunday 15th November
Bloomsbury Jamboree 2026
In gleeful collaboration with Tim Mainstone of Mainstone Press and Joe Pearson of Design for Today, I am hosting our annual BLOOMSBURY JAMBOREE, a festival of books and print, illustration, talks and seasonal merriment on SATURDAY 14th & SUNDAY 15th NOVEMBER from 10:30am until 4:30pm.
It takes place at the magnificent ART WORKERS GUILD, 6 Queens Sq, WC1, which was founded in 1884 by members of the Arts & Crafts movement including William Morris and C R Ashbee. These oak panelled rooms lined with oil paintings in a beautiful old house in Bloomsbury offer the ideal venue to celebrate our books, and the authors and artists who create them.
There will be a programme of ticketed lectures and readings plus we have invited our talented friends to exhibit, including print and paper makers, small press publishers, toy makers, potters, craft workers, urban beekeepers and importers of food by small producers. We present a selection of the work of some of our exhibitors below.
We need volunteers all day Saturday and Sunday. We offer bags of books and other goodies as rewards – if you can help us, please email hello@inkpaperandprint.co.uk
Poster by Marion Elliot
Handmade crackers by Flora Scott
Necklaces by Rachel Larkins
Richard Fuest, Potter
Birch wood decoration by Elizabeth Harbour
Collage by Cait McEniff
Mobile by Louise Lockhart
Karolina Brodnicka, Jewellery Maker. Portrait by Evoto
Wooden birds by Folka
Wood block print by New North Press
Collage by Clover Robin
Card by Marion Elliot
Published by Mainstone Press
Toy Theatres by Pollocks
Marbled paper by Flora Scott
Published by Design For Today
Lambswool socks by Catherine Tough
Helen Rogers of Highgate Honey
Print by Chris Brown
Print by Clare Youngs
Card by Marion Elliot
Ceramics by Ruby Wright
Food imported from small producers by Sail Cargo
Karolina Merska of Folka, Art historian and folk art dealer
Rare illustrated books by Endlings
Boxed sets of Eric Ravilious books published by Mainstone Press
Rings by Rachel Larkins
Birch wood decoration by Elizabeth Harbour
Woollen socks by Rooska Socks
Birch wood decoration by Elizabeth Harbour
CLICK HERE TO BOOK A TICKET FOR THE JAMBOREE
We are delighted that our friends at Populations Bakery will be baking pastries.
Invitation To The Launch & Exhibition Opening For Women at Work
You are invited to the book launch and exhibition opening for WOMEN AT WORK on Thursday 19th November from 6:30pm at Four Corners Gallery, 121 Roman Rd, E2 0QN (a five minute walk from Bethnal Green tube).
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE LAUNCH PARTY & EXHIBITION OPENING
A few tickets remain for Sarah’s illustrated lecture in which she will be showing her pictures and telling the stories behind her photographs at this year’s Bloomsbury Jamboree on Saturday 14th November at the Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Sq, London WC1N 3AT.
CLICK HERE TO BOOK FOR SARAH’S LECTURE
Sarah celebrates the contribution of female labour in exuberant portraits that capture the passion and struggle of the working life. Drawn from Sarah’s personal archive and her sixteen years as Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer, this is a panoramic survey of social change over four decades.
CLICK HERE TO BUY A SIGNED COPY FOR £20
Today we preview a small selection of Sarah’s portraits.
Merle Curtis, Sultana Begum, Armagan Middlemast & Husna Begum, Tower Hamlets Food Bank
Afa Simpson, Painter, Decorator & Clown
Donna Wood, Postwoman, Royal Mail
Claire Carmelo, Customer Service Assistant, Bethnal Green Station
Kelly Wood, Carer, Silk Court Care Home
Kellyan Saunders, Manager, Oxfam Shop
Lucinda Rogers, Artist
Maria & Anna Pellicci, E Pellicci
Nafisa & Marlene, Newmans’ Stationery
Rachel Hippolyte, Education Manager, Spitalfields City Farm
Anita Patel, Tesco
Sue Venning, Proprietor, G Kelly Pie & Mash, Roman Rd
Iflet, Garage Mechanic, Three Colts Lane
Anjum Ishtaq, Heba Women’s Project, Brick Lane
Mrs Mustapha, Nazal Dry Cleaners, Hackney Rd
Sandra Esqulant, Publican at The Golden Heart, Spitalfields, and Molly
Shakala, Customer Assistant at Favorite Fried Chicken
Fatima Chowdury, Jumara Noor Eli and Sumsun Nahar Shirna at Mahir Sarees in Bethnal Green
Arful Nessa, Home Machinist, Spitalfields
Laura Porter, Powerlifter, Bethnal Green
Carol Burns, Manager, C.E. Burns Waste Paper Merchants, Spitalfields
Chloe Robertson, Electroplater at Margolis Silver, London Fields
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
