Spitalfields Life

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

James Ince, Umbrella Makers

Nichols Brothers, Wood Turners

Bellerby & Co, Globe Makers

Wyvern Bindery, Bookbinders

Freed of London, Ballet Shoe Makers

 

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

 

Jamal Khalique of the Taj Stores is giving an illustrated talk telling the tale of ninety years of trading in Spitalfields at 7pm on Thursday November 12th in the Hanbury Hall, Hanbury St, E1 6QR

Click here to book a ticket

Please note that tickets are free on the door to all Taj Stores customers

 

The gentleman on the right is Abdul Khalique, standing with his shop assistant, in the early nineteen-fifties outside the very first Taj Stores in Hunton St (now Buxton St). Abdul Khalique’s brother Abdul Jabbar, the founder of the grocery store, commonly known then as ‘Jabber’s Shop’, was a seaman who came here from Bengal to Spitalfields in 1934 after leaving the navy. He worked in textile sweatshops for two years before opening his store, which he ran with his Irish wife Cathleen.

These sparse facts, which I learnt from Abdul Jabbar’s nephew Jamal – who never met his uncle – are all that is known of this brave man who travelled across the world and undertook the risky venture of starting a business in another continent, working so hard to build it up until his death in 1969. He would be amazed to visit the Taj Stores today and see how his modest enterprise has blossomed.

I enjoyed the privilege of a tour of the aisles in the company of Jamal (Abdul Quayum), who has been involved in the family business since he was seventeen years old, and now runs the store jointly with his elder brother Junel (Abdul Hai) and younger brother Joynal (Abdul Muhith).

It is a wonderful experience simply to explore here and savour the rich selection of produce on offer from all over the world in the Taj Stores. I love to study the beautifully organised displays of exotic fruit and vegetables, printed sacks of rice, tall stacks of brightly coloured cardboard packages, cans, bottles and jars – each with their distinctive fragrances. Then there is the cooking equipment, towers of plastic jugs and bowls, steel pots and pans, and scourers. There is a vast intricate diversity of attractive things collected here and it is a phenomenal feat of organisation that the brothers have pulled off, bringing this huge range of supplies together from the different corners of the globe.

Jamal explained to me how the business is run nowadays between the three brothers. Jamal does the hiring and the paperwork, while Joynal takes care of the day-to-day buying and selling, and Junel runs the catering supply and wholesale side of the business.’The beauty of it is, we have different responsibilities. We are a modern muslim family and we treat each other like friends,’ said Jamal proudly.

Their father Alhaj Abdul Khalique first came to the United Kingdom in 1952 as a student before becoming involved in running the business with his brother. In 1956, the grocery shop moved to larger premises at 109 Brick Lane and then when Abdul Jabbar died in 1969, Abdul Khalique ran it with his brother Abdul Rahman. The pair were photographed looking every bit the sharp business men they were, in a handsome studio portrait taken at that time.

As the Taj Stores prospered, they moved again in 1979 to 112 Brick Lane and an era ended in 1994 when Abdul Khalique died. Then the family business passed from the brothers who had emigrated to this country, into the stewardship of the current generation born in East London.

This year, Joynal, Junel & Jamal – the brothers  who run the shop today – moved the shop out of Brick Lane into their former warehouse premises at 26 Princelet Street. They explained to me that they now look back to their roots and, in the tradition of nineteenth century businessmen turned benefactors, they are funding a school and a mosque, building social housing, investing in irrigation and two cancer clinics back in Moulvibazar, Sylhet, Bangladesh – the home town where Abdul Jabbar set out from all those years ago when this story began.

Abdul Jabbar, the founder of Taj Stores

Abdul Khalique and his brother Abdul Rahman who ran the Taj Stores in the fifties

Taj Stores, 109 Brick Lane in 1977 (Photograph by Homer Sykes)

Taj Stores, 1980

Taj Stores, 109 Brick Lane (photograph by Phil Maxwell)

Taj Stores, 109 Brick Lane (photograph by Phil Maxwell)

Demolition of 109 Brick Lane, early eighties (photograph by Phil Maxwell)

Outside Taj Stores, 112 Brick Lane, c.1987 (photograph by Phil Maxwell)

Komor Uddin, Taj Stores, 7th December 1990 (photograph by Clive Murphy)

Joan Lauder the cat lady, buying cat food at Taj Stores, Brick Lane, 3rd August 1992 (photograph by Clive Murphy)

Taj Stores, 112 Brick Lane 2012 (photograph by Phil Maxwell)

Delivering cooking oil to Taj Stores, 112 Brick Lane 2002 (photograph by Phil Maxwell)

Taj Stores, 26 Princelet Street, E1 6RL