Lucinda Rogers At Ridley Rd Market III
Outside Kash fabric shop
In the third of this series, Contributing Artist Lucinda Rogers & I visit Ridley Rd Market in Dalston to meet more of the traders featured in her current exhibition On Gentrification – Drawings of Ridley Rd Market at House of Illustration in Kings Cross.
Lucinda is discussing her work at the gallery on Thursday 1st February at 7pm. Click here for tickets.
Hamid for fabrics
Hamid Sedigh – “I came to this country in 1974 to see the Beatles in Liverpool. I couldn’t understand English then, but I loved the music and I used to buy their 45 records. I became a student of fashion at Redbridge College, where I studied for two years. I brought a carpet with me from Iran and I thought, ‘If I need some money, I can sell it.’ I offered it to a rich man for £1000 but he said, ‘I will give you £800.’ It was an expensive silk carpet that I had been given as a present, so I would not part with it. In Stamford Hill, there was a carpet shop I knew run by those gentlemen with black hats and ringlets, so I offered it to them. They offered to swap it for twenty rolls of fabric that they had and I said, ‘Yes.’ I brought it to this market in 1978 to sell from a stall and I have been here selling fabric ever since.”
Donna & Maria at Jimbos
Donna Merny – “My sister was working here and she asked me to come on Saturday, but I ended up working on weekdays too from nine until four. Almost everyone that works here is a friend of a friend and we all know each other’s children. It’s quite a nice atmosphere and I like meeting the different people, we get all sorts here. There are only a few people, you think, ‘Oh no! Not her again.’ I serve customers and do general tidying up. To be honest, I worked in an office and I didn’t like it at all. Brenda who owns this shop, her family used to have a lot of stalls in this market more than forty years ago.”
Fruit Mountain, entrance to Ridley Rd
Matt Fawcett (just visible behind his fruit mountain) – “I get up at four in the morning and I am at New Spitalfields Market at five-fifteen, five days a week. It pays the bills. The guy who started this stall, he was a prize fighter, so I think that was how he got the best pitch in the market.”
Drawings copyright © Lucinda Rogers
Lucinda Rogers: On Gentrification – Drawings from Ridley Rd Market is open at House of Illustration, Tuesday – Sunday from 10am-6pm until 25th March
You may also like to take a look at
Lucinda Rogers at Ridley Rd Market
Lucinda Rogers at Ridley Rd Market II
Greetings from Boston,
GA, I love Lucinda Rogers drawings which you have featured in the past. These ones of Ridley Road Market puts me in a buying mood – even though I am not a shopper…
What a distinctive style – I so admire this artist’s way with line and her spot-on placement of
color washes. The top image says so much about her skill — the line quality is loose and flowing, and yet we can “feel” a breeze moving those dresses on the rack, and fabrics that overhang the
table. May I say (as a compliment) that her style reminds me of one of the great masters of
American illustration, Bob Peak? When he was not doing his highly-celebrated commercial work, his personal sketches had a kindred feel to this series; and he enjoyed including bits of lettering.
I am wowed by her ability to capture an image, a mood, a scene…….with her lavish line.
Wonderful.
I was born and brought up in Stoke Newington. We lived in a house on Clonbrock Road. I visited Ridley Road market often and marveled at the towering fruit stalls and all the costermongers calling out. I used to go with my family to the Eel and Pie shop across the street and I remember being hoisted up to look at the eels slithering around in their containers. and my Dad and I went to The Waste too to look at odds and ends—just the two of us, it was so special. There was also Chapel Street market in Islington and I remember the smell and taste of apple fritters and the man who took pictures—I still have the photo of me holding a woolly monkey (must have been the organ grinders) I look ecstatically happy! It was working class and grimey and I loved it all. Now I live in Chicago, going on 40 years, but I remember a time in my old neighbourhood that is long gone with great fondness. Thanks for bringing it back to me.