WITH 4 DAYS TO GO, thanks to the generosity of 14 more donors since yesterday, we have now raised £17,766 with £7,234 left to find to reach our target of £25,000 to publish WOMEN AT WORK, Sarah Ainslie’s East End Portraits 1992-2025. CLICK HERE TO VISIT OUR CROWDFUND

Kyri demonstrates a pattern for a circular pleat

In a remote corner of Tottenham, in the midst of an industrial estate, sandwiched between a kosher butcher and a panel beater, Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I found Rosamanda Pleaters. We dipped our heads and stepped through a low door to enter a crowded factory. As our eyes accustomed to the gloom, we peered into the depths where lines of machines filled the space, appearing to recede into the infinite distance. We expected a horde of ghostly workers shrouded in cobwebs, but on closer examination the machines were all idle.

Yet, in a pool of bright light, one man worked alone, wrestling cloth, cardboard, sticks and string, subjecting them to his will with expert control. This was the legendary pleater Kyriacos Hadjikyriacou, universally known as Kyri. He removed a piece of silk from between a pair of cardboard patterns that were folded into an intricate design which they imparted to the cloth, as delicate as a butterfly wing and as richly coloured as the plumage of an exotic bird. We were entranced.

The magic of pleating is to take diaphanous fabric and give it volume and structure through a geometric series of creases. These pleats move, amplifying the gesture and motion of the wearer in unexpected and sensuous ways. This is the spell that pleating can impart to clothes. Kyri is the grand master of it.

He has contrived hundreds of unique designs for pleats, spending months conjuring his intricate notions. Pleating is his imaginative world. ‘This one is stars on one side and squares on the other,’ he explained unrolling an elaborately folded piece of cardboard that quivered as if it had a life of its own. ‘I call it ‘Crown Pleat,” he confided to me in a proud conspiratorial whisper. ‘I have never used it yet.’ Kyri finds inspiration for new designs in pantiles, scallop shells and hieroglyphics.

All day the phone rings and breathless fashion assistants arrive from London’s top designers – Christopher Kane, Alexander McQueen, Jasper Conran, among others so fancy we are not permitted to mention – bringing lengths of cloth for Kyri to work his transformative wizardry upon.

A tall slim man with pale grey hair and straggling white moustache set off by his mediterranean colouring, Kyri cuts a handsome figure. Of philosophical nature, he is untroubled by the endless to and fro, delighting in the attention and maintaining a confident equanimity throughout. He may serve the capricious world of fashion, but his is the realm of geometry and chemistry. Cardboard, sticks and string are his tools, and steam is the alchemical essence that enables him to work his sorcery upon the cloth, subjecting it to his desire.

“As a pleater, you are always learning. Even after forty-three years of pleating, I am learning. It is not just a question of mastering three or five styles, you have to use your imagination. You have know engineering and about how machines work, you have to know geometry to understand how the patterns function, you have to know chemistry to predict how the material will react.

There’s a lot of things you have to know to be a pleater. It’s a talent. I create new things everyday. I design my own patterns. If I see something I like, I work how it is done and I design my own version. At the beginning, I used to come in every Saturday just to experiment with styles. I tried different ways to use the machines to find new styles. I have two hundred different designs of my own.

Hand pleating is done by placing the cloth between two paper patterns, known as ‘pleating crafts.’ They are made of a special paper that is water resistant and does not get wet. You open the craft, stretch the two papers and lay down the material, sandwiched between the two papers. Then you tie them tight and put them in the steam.

The easiest fabric for pleating is polyester. It holds the pleats well, you can even put it in a washing machine. In hand-pleating, you use only steam but in machine-pleating you use the heat of the machine and steam too, so it is more powerful and will resist washing. I have all these machines. One can do fifteen hundred different styles, another is a fancy one that do a couple of thousand different styles.

I don’t need to advertise, people come and find me, and they keep coming back. I tell them,’If you need me, you find me!’ If I make something, it has to be of the standard that I would like to buy – which means it is good to give to a customer.

My work is perfect pleating. It is rare. There are some patterns, I am the only person in England who can do them. Other pleaters do standard pleats and they think that’s everything but it is not. It can take six months to design a pattern. I might start work on it at Christmas and finish in June. I did not  know how to do it, but slowly I work it out. I enjoy pleating because I am always creating things. When I started, I didn’t know anything about this.

I have an Msc in Agriculture. I finished my studies in Athens in 1975 and, because of the war in which Turkey invaded Cyprus, I came to England as a refugee. I married my wife Eleni and in the beginning I worked in a knitting factory, Sharon Fabrics in Holloway. After they closed down, I worked at a water plant, analysing water in  Crews Hill in Enfield for bacteria. But somebody told me to push a wheelbarrow and I didn’t like it so I left.

After that, I was asked to work for a pleater in Hackney and that was how I started. In 1980, me and two other people, we opened a knitting factory in Clerkenwell near Smithfield Market. My wife worked in Holborn as a bookkeeper then. She asked me, ‘How much does it cost to set up a pleating factory? I told her, ‘Maybe two or three thousand pounds.’ So that’s what we did, we started in business together and we employed two boys. Eighteen months later, we had a fire and all the others left but I carried on.

I have been here in this workshop in Tottenham for twenty-six years. I had a pleater who passed away before my wife eighteen months ago, so I am on my own. There’s just me now but in the past I used to have seven pleaters working for me. All these machines I have are from factories that closed and nobody else wants them There is no business any more for volume. All the High St shops manufacture in the Far East, my business is just with designers now.

I used to work on Sundays, I arrived at eight o’clock every morning and worked until seven. Now I arrive at nine o’clock and work until five, just weekdays. I will carry on as long as I can. I said to my children, ‘I am not going to retire because – for me – if somebody retires they are waiting for death.’ It’s true! If you put your car outside for six months and don’t use it, the tyres and battery go flat. The human being is like that I think.”

Kyri lays a pattern on the table

Kyri has over two hundred patterns for pleating that he has designed

Kyri shows off a favourite pleating pattern

‘I call this ‘Crown Pleat”

‘Craft pleats’ ready for use

Kyri places weights upon the patterns to make sure the fabric is tightly sandwiched

Kyri removes the weights once the pattern is compressed

Kyri rolls the patterns to squeeze the fabric into the form of the patterns

Kyri places the patterns between two splints

Kyri ties the splints together

Kyri concertinas the patterns as tight as possible between the splints

The completed ‘pleating craft’ is ready for the steam oven

Kyri’s steam ovens where the pleats are baked

Kyri shows off his pleating machine

Last minute maintenance to the steamer

A pleated silk shirt ready to be steamed flat

Kyri the pleater

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

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Maurice Franklin, Wood Turner

Frank Foster, Shirtmaker

WITH 5 DAYS TO GO, thanks to generosity of 16 more donors since yesterday, we have now raised £16,691 with £8,309 left to find to reach our target of £25,000 to publish WOMEN AT WORK, Sarah Ainslie’s East End Portraits 1992-2025. CLICK HERE TO VISIT OUR CROWDFUND

Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green

Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie has been taking portraits of people in their wardrobes since 2002 and she has done over fifty.

“Wardrobes are private places where personal belongings are kept, not only clothes but also objects with special meanings and memories. Children see them as spaces where adults hide secrets and I always felt there were secrets in my parents’ wardrobes. As a child, my grandmother’s knicker drawer fascinated me, and we would search for sweeties that she kept in jars and beautiful evening dresses in her wardrobe that she let us touch. My father had a bespoke wardrobe with special racks for shoes and drawers for all his different garments, and my mother had a big walk-in wardrobe. I conceal letters and strange memorabilia, like casts of my teeth, in mine.”

Sarah Ainslie

Emily Shepherd

Julie Begum

Hydar Dewachi

Madeleine Ruggi

Sara Sheppard

Luke Dixon

Lara Clifton

Shakila

Brand Thumim

Jo Ann Kaplan

Sid Dixon

Penny Woolcock

Prue Ainslie

Simon Hoare-Walter

Jenny Carlin

Lel McIntyre

Ryan-Rhiannon Styles

Ruhela

Francine Merry

Sabeha Miah

Kassandra & Dan Isaacson

Andrew Dawson

Shelagh Ainslie

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

]]> https://spitalfieldslife.com/2026/05/13/sarah-ainslies-wardobe-portraits-ii/feed/ 3 206971 https://spitalfieldslife.com/2026/05/12/a-heartwarming-response/ https://spitalfieldslife.com/2026/05/12/a-heartwarming-response/#comments Mon, 11 May 2026 23:01:52 +0000 https://spitalfieldslife.com/?p=206940

Merle Curtis, Sultana Begum, Armagan Middlemast & Husna Begum, Food Bank Volunteers, Bethnal Green, 2022

Since the end of last week, our crowdfund to publish Sarah Ainslie’s WOMEN AT WORK, East End Portraits 1992-2025 has nearly doubled, surging from £8,054 to more than £15,500 thanks to the additional support of over fifty more readers.

I must confess there has been some handwringing behind the scenes over the past three weeks, because – of all the books we have published – this could not be the one that we fail to deliver. Hopefully, we are in the home stretch with less than £9,500 left to raise now and 6 days left.

I believe we can do it.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE CROWDFUND

Here are some more extracts from the book with commentary by Sarah Ainslie.

It was a journey finding, meeting and photographing these women and each workplace was a completely different experience and some were more dramatic than others. This was especially true when I was invited to go out on the beat with WPC Helen Taylor in her car. I was sitting in the back seat when we went into an emergency response mode with the blue light flashing and siren blaring, hurtling through the streets at breakneck speed. It was absolutely terrifying and hard to focus and take photographs. In what seemed ages, but was probably about five minutes, we reached the estate where I had to wait in the car whilst she and her colleague went to investigate, and when they returned I was able to take some pictures.

At Tesco, everyone knows Anita Patel who is often to be found helping customers at the check-out or stacking shelves with the rest of the staff and always happy to show you where a product is. Photographing with her was so much fun as there was much laughter with her colleagues when they wanted to join in. Anita is also very involved in helping to raise money for charities in the community.

Nikki Brewer was someone I located through an agency for tradeswomen, she was working independently and with Amy’s Electric a company of women electricians. I took photographs of her whilst she was working in this very small bathroom, standing on the bath and backed up against the wall as there was hardly any space in the room but she just carried on working. She is very passionate about sharing her skills and knowledge with younger women to encourage them to become electricians. She has since become my electrician.

With seven days to go, thanks to generosity of 132 donors, we have raised £14,081 towards our target of £25,000 to publish Women at Work, Sarah Ainslie’s East End Portraits 1992-2025. If you have not contributed please consider doing so at this crucial moment. If you have contributed please help us by persuading your friends, family and workmates  to do so too. Click here to visit the crowdfund

Curator of Human Osteology, Rebecca Redfern watches over her charge (Portrait by Sarah Ainslie)

In his Survey of London 1589, John Stow wrote about the discovery of pots of Roman gold coins buried in Spitalfields and it had long been understood that ancient tombs once lined the road approaching London, just as they did along the Appian Way in Rome. Yet it was only in the nineteen-nineties, when large scale excavations took place prior to the redevelopment of the Spitalfields Market, that the full extent of the Roman cemetery was uncovered.

In March 1999, a Roman stone sarcophagus containing a rare lead coffin decorated with scallop shells came to light, indicating the burial of someone of great wealth and high status. Grave goods of fine glass and jet were buried between the coffin and the sarcophagus. It was the first unopened sarcophagus to be found in London for over a century and when the entire assemblage was removed to the London Museum, the coffin was opened to reveal the body of a young woman in her early twenties, buried in ceremonial fashion. In the week after the opening of the coffin, ten thousand Londoners came to pay their respects to the Spitalfields Roman woman. She was the most astonishing discovery of the excavations yet, as the years have passed and more has been learnt about her, the enigma of her identity has become the subject of increasing fascination.

Analysis of residue in the coffin revealed that her head lay upon a pillow of bay leaves, her body was embalmed with oils from the Arab world and the Mediterranean, and wrapped in silk which had been interwoven with fine gold thread. Traces of Tyrian purple were also found, perhaps from a blanket laid over the coffin. Such an elaborate presentation suggests she may have been displayed to her family and friends seventeen hundred years ago as part of funeral rites.

The sarcophagus and grave goods are on public exhibition at the Museum but, thanks to Rebecca Redfern, Curator of Human Osteology, Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie and I had the privilege to visit the Rotunda where the human remains are stored and view the skeleton of the Spitalfields Roman woman. Deep in a windowless concrete bunker filled with metal shelving stacked with cardboard boxes, containing the remains of thousands of Londoners from the past, lay the bones of the woman. We stood in silent reverence with just the sound of distant traffic echoing.

Rebecca is the informal guardian of the Spitalfields woman and remembers switching  on the television to watch news of the discovery as a student. Today, she has a four-year-old daughter of her own. “The work went on for so many years that a lot of couples met working in Spitalfields,” Rebecca admitted to me, “and there is now a whole generation of ‘Spital babies’ born to those archaeologists.”

“She’s five foot three and delicately built, petite like a ballet dancer,” Rebecca continued, turning her attention swiftly from the living to the dead and gesturing protectively to the bones laid out upon the table. While some might objectify the skeleton as a specimen, Rebecca relates to the Spitalfields Roman woman and all the other twenty thousand remains in her care as human beings. “They’re able to tell us so much about themselves, it’s impossible not to regard them as people,” she assured me.

Recent research into the isotopes present in the teeth of the Spitalfields Roman woman have revealed an exact match with those found in Imperial Rome, which means that her origin can be traced not just to Italy but to Rome itself. “I find it very sad that she came so far and then died so young,” Rebecca confided, recognising the lack of any indication of the cause of death or whether the woman had given birth. Contemplating the presence of the skeleton with its delicate bones dyed brown by lead, it is apparent that the Spitalfields Roman woman holds her secrets and has many stories yet to tell.

More than seventy-five Roman burials were uncovered at the same time as the sarcophagus, many interred within wooden coffins and some only in shrouds. You might say these represented the earliest wave of immigration to arrive in Spitalfields.

“People were so mobile,” Rebecca explained to me, “We found a fourteen-year-old girl from North Africa whose mother was European. A legion from North Africa was sent to guard Hadrian’s Wall and we have found tagine cooking pots that may been theirs. I pity those men – how they must have suffered in the cold.”

The only Roman sarcophagus discovered in London in our time was uncovered in Spitalfields in 1999

Inside the stone sarcophagus an elaborately decorated lead coffin was discovered

At the Museum of London, the debris was removed to uncover the pattern of scallop shells

The lead coffin was opened to reveal the body of a young woman

Photographs of coffin & excavations copyright © London Museum

Portrait of Rebecca Redfern & photographs of skeletal details copyright © Sarah Ainslie

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In Search Of Roman London

Inside the Rotunda At The London Museum

Next tickets available for The Gentle Author’s Tour of Spitalfields on Saturday 16th May. Click here to book

The recipe is old but the cakes are fresh

This is Harry Thomas, baker at Townhouse, who makes all the cakes for our walking tours. His Queen Cakes from a recipe of 1721, served in the drawing room of the three hundred year house overlooking Christ Church, Spitalfields, have proved to be the ideal restorative for guests when they put their feet up and relax after a ramble round the neighbourhood.

Yet Harry has another string to his bow, since he matches his superlative flair in baking with an equal talent in music and songwriting – as Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie and I discovered when we joined him in the basement kitchen to hear the full story and observe the culinary spectacle of baking in progress.

“I would describe myself as a baker by trade and a musician in the rest of my time. Music has always been my passion and I played in a band for seven years when I was at school, growing up in Maidenhead, and then again at Goldsmith’s College where I studied Media & Communications. I graduated five years ago and started baking at Townhouse when I was twenty-one years old.

By then I was already in The Jacques. We are a touring band with more of an audience in France and continental Europe than here, so for the first couple of years, before Covid, we toured extensively. We are working on our second album now – I am a singer and we all write our songs together.

I have always been passionate about cooking and especially baking. My mother is a nursery school teacher, and we baked together and she took me to music lessons. As a child, I did not like reading fiction, instead I read cook books – that was what people bought me at Christmas.

At first, I read children’s cook books but then I graduated to adult ones at school, supplemented by Youtube cookery shows and the Food Network. As a consequence, I am not afraid of creating aggregates by taking parts of one recipe and the combining it with another. My parents will follow a recipe by the book exactly whereas  I do not. The more batches of cakes I have baked, the more I have come to understand the variables which gives me leeway in terms of how I want a cake to turn out.

Since I came to work here, I have introduced more cakes into the repertoire although I still make a lot of those that were being baked before I arrived. But the more I have baked them, and by listening to customers’ preferences, I have evolved the recipes.

Flavour-wise, I just play around with things until I am happy. I bake cakes the way I like them and I will not bake something that I would not be interested in eating myself. I like old recipes and cakes that remind me of the cakes that my mum would have baked or those I remember at bake sales at village fairs.

I want my cakes to make people feel special. When I introduced the Bakewell cake, I liked it because it was very crumbly, and I dust it with icing sugar and it feels special without being pretentious. It is very simple, equal measurements of everything in the cake and it just needs to be done correctly, with care.

I have a great balance in my life of baking and music. I could not have dreamt of a better balance of my passions in life. Obviously, I would like my music to advance and we have a record deal and a publishing deal. I am very uncompromising in that I always wanted my job to be rewarding and it is instantly gratifying. I get to cook all day and regularly go and play music all evening. Sometimes I get up early and go to the gym, bake cakes all day, and go and play music until midnight. Then I go to bed and come back and do it all over again!”

At the foot of the page in Mary Stockdale’s recipe book of 1721 is the recipe for Queen Cakes

Harry and his celebrated Queen Cakes, laced with mace and nutmeg

Photographs of Harry Thomas copyright © Sarah Ainslie

After three weeks of crowdfunding – thanks to the generosity of  87 supporters – we have raised £11,304, which is close to half of our target of £25,000 to publish the book of Sarah Ainslie’s photographs, accompanied by an exhibition of the pictures.

We have just a week to go now and I call upon my readers to help us at this crucial moment. If every reader of Spitalfields Life gave even a small donation, we could reach our total today. Additionally, if you are able to contribute now, this will build momentum and encourage others.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE CROWDFUND

I believe Sarah Ainslie’s book is important. Firstly, because these are seriously good photographs. Secondly, because our world is shaped by the work done by women who are too often unseen and this project is a means to give them visibility and celebrate them. Thirdly, because – by documenting working women through four decades – Sarah has created a vital record of social change.

Below you can read some of the things supporters have been saying and see some pages from the book.

‘Sarah Ainslie’s portraits are always wonderful, and it will be a joy to see these pictures of women gathered together in what will I know be the be the beautiful trademark hardback of a Spitalfields Life publication.’ Arbabella Warner

‘Wonderful to see this compelling visual testimony to women’s work. Thank you for bringing it to light.’ Olivia Horsfall Turner

‘Thank you for your work recognising and celebrating women’s lives.’ Caz Richards

‘Lived in the East End for 40+ years. An inspired book Sarah.’ LisaFerguson

‘Good luck with the book. It sounds great.’ Alice Rawsthorn

‘This is an amazing project. Good luck with the crowdfund and looking forward to the publication. Best, Fatima’

‘Looking forward to seeing this in print. Well done Sarah!’ David Hoffman

‘This will be a wonderful, inspiring and fascinating book. So looking forward to seeing it published.’ Mary Norden

‘Bravo for the women doing the work, and Sarah for celebrating them!’ Robin Huffman

‘The Alcove in Rhode Island is one of the only publicly accessible libraries in the world focused entirely on women at work. We are thrilled to support this book, and to someday boast a copy on our shelves.’

‘Lovely portraits of terrific women. It’s so nice to see ordinary people and their work photographed with such skill.’ Mary Dalton

‘What an amazing project! So happy to support it.’ Vivienne Palmer

‘A wonderful celebration of the work of women in the East End. For my 3rd great great grandmother Isabella Hirst and her four daughters Isabella, Charlotte, Elizabeth and Harriett.’ Carolyn Hirst

Here are a few excerpts from the pages of the book.

Bow food bank volunteers

‘There are number of women who work in teams like the rubbish collectors and street sweepers. When I went out on the dustcart in Hackney it was interesting to experience at first-hand what their work entails and how much we don’t think about the services that are seemingly unseen, it also gave me an insight into how important it was for them to be able to create their own systems of working as a team, to be in charge of their own patch in their own way. Often the smell would become overwhelming as we drove around the streets, stopping periodically to collect and empty the bins. I really enjoyed the moments during their tea breaks whilst sitting in the back of the truck chatting, laughing and sharing snippets of their lives with each other as they did crosswords.’ Sarah Ainslie

‘I think one of the most fascinating places in the East End is C. E. Burns in Bacon St, a second-hand furniture and bric-a-brac store, and finding Carol Burns within her personal domain of a garden shed that is her office, she is a woman in charge sitting gloriously in the midst of the office paraphernalia, filing boxes filled with receipts spilling everywhere, memorabilia and family photos especially those of her dad Charlie Burns who was an East End waste paper merchant and boxing entrepreneur. I loved all these details that told a story about her and the family and the life that they had lived and whose business she now runs.’ Sarah Ainslie

‘The labour force in the area of health, well-being and caring is predominantly made up of women who are often unrecognised for their work, their capacity for care is so vital to each of our lives. It was a great experience to have access to so many different hospital departments at Homerton Hospital where everyone gave me their precious time and a greater understanding of how a hospital works, especially as I had been a patient there only the year before. As I photographed I very quickly realized that everyone from consultants, doctors, nurses, midwives and admin staff to cleaners, physios, chaplains, and porters are interdependent and all equally important to each other and the patients, and without any one of those elements the hospital would cease to function properly.’ Sarah Ainslie

‘I discovered Shirif Izzet one morning when I walked into Solis Launderette (owned by her brother) where she is the manager. She was so welcoming to me and everyone who came in, and as we were chatting, she kept going off to make mugs of tea and biscuits for the elders who were waiting for their washing. On the walls there were photographs of customers and postcards that they had sent from their holidays, revealing a genuine feeling of warmth and care for the community. When I asked about coming to photograph her, she immediately said she would and was happy to do it right there and then, so that’s what we did. Launderettes are part of the wonderful places to have around us, not just to get your washing done or a service wash but a place that is warm and friendly to hang out in, they are a hub like cafes, chicken shops, libraries and community centres.’ Sarah Ainslie

I love to visit dark old houses on bright sunny days. There is something delicious about stepping from the light of the day into the dark of the interior, almost as if the transition from one zone to another was that of time travel, from the present into another era.

I wonder if this notion is a residue of my childhood, when my parents took me on holiday trips to visit stately homes, so that now I associate these charismatically crumbling old piles of architecture with bright English afternoons.

Such were my feelings when visiting Sutton House, the oldest house in the East End, recently. It made me think of the country mansions of city burghers that once filled Spitalfields before the streets were laid out and the terraces built up.

Built between 1534-5 by Ralph Sadleir, an associate of Thomas Cromwell, Sutton House employed oak beams from the royal forest of Enfield given to Cromwell by Henry VIII. In 1550, Sadleir sold his house to John Machell who became Sheriff Of London, acquiring wealth as a City merchant. Overreaching himself in debt, the house was repossessed by Sir James Deane, a money-lender.

By 1627, it was in the ownership of Captain John Milward, a silk merchant and member of the East India Company, who furnished it with oriental carpets and commissioned elaborate strapwork murals upon the staircase that survive in fragments to this day.

Sarah Freeman leased the house in 1657 for a girls’ school which ran for nearly a century until it was divided into two dwellings in the mid-eighteenth century, Ivy House and Milford House. Only at the end of the nineteenth century were the two halves reunited when Canon Evelyn Gardner created St John’s Institute as a recreational club for ‘men of all classes.’ Within ten years the building was condemned as unsafe, but thanks to a public appeal which raised £3000 it was extensively renovated with additions in the Arts & Crafts style.

After the Institute left, a failed attempt was made to buy Sutton House for the nation before the National Trust stepped in to save it in 1938. For decades, rooms were let as offices to voluntary organisations until squatters occupied the house in the eighties. Then developers were prevented from converting it into luxury flats by a successful local campaign to Save Sutton House which eventually opened to the public in 1991.

Thus history passed through Sutton House like a whirlwind yet, despite all the changes, the atmosphere of past ages still lingers, especially in the shadowy panelled rooms that enfold the overwhelming mystery of numberless untold stories.

Tudor door and Georgian fanlight

Original transom window dating from the Tudor era

In the Linenfold Parlour

Looking downstairs from the Great Chamber

Looking from the Little Chamber into the Great Chamber

The Great Chamber

Cabinet in the Little Chamber

Tudor kitchen

Cellar stairs

Looking through the courtyard

Looking up from the courtyard

Known as the ‘Armada Window,’ this is the oldest window in the East End

Sutton House can be visited as part of a guided tour. Tickets go on sale every Friday for tours on the following Wednesday, Friday & Sunday.

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At Eastbury Manor

Tessa Hunkin and the members of Hackney Mosaic Project never stop creating. Their latest masterpiece, Birds of Hoxton, was installed in the residents’ garden at Follingham Court this week, where it can be seen by passers-by walking south down Hoxton St.

Three years in the making, this ambitious diptych illustrates the ornithology of the neighbourhood with each species created by a different mosaic maker, imparting diverse personalities to each of the birds and vivid life to the completed mosaic.

Further up in Hoxton Market, decorative mosaic roundels have been installed outside Shoreditch Library, Hoxton Hall and Hoxton Garden, while just round the corner where Pitfield St meets Old St, you will find the Hoxton Varieties Mosaic from 2013. These new projects mark a return to their roots for the project, since this is where it all began with the Shepherdess Walk Mosaics back in 2012.

Tessa Hunkin is giving an illustrated talk, showing the mosaics and telling the story of the project, this Sunday 10th May at 4pm at Sutton House, Homerton High St, E9 6JQ, as part of Hackney History Festival.

Click here to buy a ticket for £3

Sutton House is the oldest house in Hackney and one of London’s few remaining Tudor mansions, built in 1535, so this is a great opportunity to pay a visit.

Roundel outside Hoxton Garden

Roundel outside Hoxton Hall

Roundel outside Shoreditch Library

Tessa Hunkin with two local councillors on the eve of the local election

The Hoxton Varieties mosaic was installed in Pitfield St in 2013

Click here to order a copy of Tessa Hunkin’s Hackney Mosaic Project

We are in the third week of our crowdfund and have raised £7,479 towards our target of £25,000, so we still have a way to go. Please check in the pockets of your winter coat and down the back of the sofa to see if you can help us get there.

Click here to support our crowdfund to publish Sarah Ainslie’s WOMEN AT WORK

Happy in the crypt beneath John Soane’s St John on Bethnal Green of 1828, Piotr Frac works peacefully making beautiful stained glass while the world passes by at this busiest of East End crossroads. Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I visited Piotr in his subterranean workshop and were delighted to observe his dexterity in action and admire some of his recent creations.

Piotr’s appealingly modest demeanour and soft spoken manner belie the moral courage and determination it has cost him to succeed in this rare occupation. This is to say nothing of his extraordinary skill in the cutting of glass and the melding of lead to fashion such accomplished work, or his creative talent in contriving designs that draw upon the age-old traditions of stained glass but are unmistakably of our own time.

Gripped by a passion for the magic of stained glass at an early age, Piotr always knew this what what he had to do. Yet even to begin to make his way in his chosen profession, Piotr had to leave his home country and find a whole new life, speaking another language in another country.

It is our gain that Piotr brought his talent and capacity for work to London. That he found his spiritual home in the East End is no accident, since he follows in the footsteps of centuries of skilled migrants, starting with the Huguenots in the sixteenth century, who have immeasurably enriched our culture with their creative energies.

“I am from a working class family in Byton, Silesia, in the south of Poland. My interest in stained glass began when I was ten or eleven years old and I went with my school to see Krakow Cathedral. The stained glass was something beautiful and that was the first time in my life I saw it. I was inspired by the colours and the light, it still excites me.

I always had an interest in drawing and painting – so, after high school, I went to a school of sculpture where they taught stained glass restoration. This was more than twenty years ago, but it was the start of my journey with stained glass. After I got my diploma in the restoration of stained glass, I worked on a project at a church for a few weeks before university. I studied art education in Silesia and I learnt painting, sculpture and calligraphy. I believe every artist needs a background in drawing and painting.

My ambition was to do stained glass, but there were hardly any jobs of any kind – I sold fish in the market in winter and I worked in a hospital, I took whatever I could get. Around 2005, I decided to leave the country. I had some Polish friends who had come to London and they helped me find a place to stay in Brixton. In the beginning, it was very difficult for me because of the language barrier. Without English, it was hard for me to communicate and find a job here. I worked on building sites. Every morning I got up at five and I walked around with this piece of paper which told me how to ask for a job. Someone wrote down a phonetic version of the words for me and I asked at building sites. After two weeks, I got a labouring job.

I lived in many places south of the river but seven years ago I moved to East London and I have stayed here ever since. At first I lived in the Hackney Rd near Victoria Park and I am still in that area, close the Roman Rd. I visited stained glass workshops but I could not get a job because I could not communicate. I did not want to work as a labourer forever so I decided to go to language school to learn English and this helped me a lot. At the English school here in the crypt of St John’s Bethnal Green, my teacher asked us to prepare a talk about myself and my interests. So I talked about my profession as a stained glass artist and my teacher introduced me to a stone carver in the crypt workshop. He told me, ‘If you are willing to teach stained glass classes, you are welcome to use the workshop.’ I started eight years ago with one student.

My first commission was to repair a Victorian glass door. Most of my work has been Victorian and Edwardian windows and doors, which has allowed me to survive because there are plenty that need repair or replacement. There are not a lot of creative commissions on offer but sometimes people want something different.

Two years ago, I won a competition to design a window for St John’s Hackney. It took a year for them to approve the design and I am in the middle of working on it now. I need to finish and install it. Also the London Museum bought a piece of mine. It is gorilla from a triptych of gorillas and it will be displayed there next year.

Once I moved to East London, I felt I belonged to here – not only because I started my workshop but because I met my wife, Akiko, here. In 2016, I become a British citizen so now I am a permanent member of the community.

Stained glass is a wonderful medium to work with and always looks fantastic because it changes all the time with the light, in different times of the day and seasons of the year. I believe there is a great potential for stained glass in modern architecture.

These days I am able to make a living and I would like to become more recognised as a stained glass artist. I am seeking more ambitious commissions.”

Constructing a nineteenth century door panel

A panel from Piotr’s triptych of gorillas

Piotr’s first panel designed and made in London

Piotr with one of his stained glass classes in the crypt of St John’s Bethnal Green

Repairing a Victorian glass door

Restoring nineteenth century church glass

Before repair

After repair

Piotr Frac, Stained Glass Artist

Studio portraits © Sarah Ainslie

Contact Piotr Frac direct to commission stained glass

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I have collaborated with photographer Sarah Ainslie twice in the course of my writing, both occasions were creating portraits of local cafes: Paul Rothe & Sons, near Daunt Books in Marylebone where I work, and Beppe’s Cafe in Smithfield Market near where I live. I was delighted that these pieces were published here by The Gentle Author.

In addition to writing Spitalfields Life, The Gentle Author also produces books, so I was very excited to learn that Spitalfields Life is running a crowdfunding campaign to publish a book of Sarah Ainslie’s portraits of women at work, accompanied by an exhibition of the photos. I was curious to find out how this came about, so last week I met Sarah for a chat about her life as a photographer. I began by asking her when she started taking photographs.

‘When I was ten I had a little box brownie, I think it was called a Brownie 44a and it had two different exposures, a twelve and a thirteen, so you could just press the button. I took pictures of animals and family, things like that.’

Sarah wasn’t interested in the professions suggested to her by her headmistress. ‘I think I always wanted to go into the arts. I had my portrait painted with my brother when I was nine and it was such a visceral experience. I remember thinking at the time, ‘I absolutely love this’. It was the smell of paint. We had these plums to eat and we would just sit there. My brother hated it. It wasn’t a great painting because my brother really didn’t like doing it but it was a pivotal moment for me, being in a room where someone is painting – the smell of it – very physical, and that’s the thing I love about photography and being in the dark room.

I wasn’t very good at painting or drawing so I went to Derby Art College to do photography. It was very male, there were only three of us girls in our year. We shared a dark room and we were doing quite wacky stuff, while the guys were doing pictures of cars and things. Of course, we weren’t interested in anything like that. We were painting emulsion on paper and being experimental. The three of us are still in touch. One is Canadian and I am going to be part of a show with her next year in Canada.

Then I went on a course in printmaking in Oxford, doing etching and lithographs, and I worked with two tutors as their assistant, printing editions. I had never done it before.  That’s what brought me to London, the tutors rented a printing studio and asked me if I would come and be their assistant, printing their editions. That would have been in the late seventies.

We decided we needed a space for the etching press, so I was wandering around the East End looking for studios and found myself down in Wapping where I found a studio which we used to do the printmaking. Then I took on another floor which was about 4,000 square feet and divided it up into studios. I did most of it myself, apart from the electricity and plumbing. It was right on the river, an incredible place. Today it is a gated community but it was still a working industrial building then. There were masses of artists in all these buildings and I wanted to have my own space, and I lived there. It was very raw.

I got involved with taking photographs for theatre companies as well as doing my own projects, Brick Lane, Smithfield Meat Market and Shoreditch, at night. I was working mainly in fringe theatre, I really enjoyed working with the Women’s Theatre Group, Shared Experience, Theatre de Complicite and the Almeida.

I built my first darkroom in Wapping. There were six of us and I rented it for a tiny amount of money and then sublet the space. I got to know artists who were living there as well and met a couple of filmmakers Sally Potter and Jo Ann Kaplan, and started working with them. I was working on The Gold Diggers, it was night shoots in the middle of the city and was amazing, filming in all these little hidden alleys around Bank.’

The more we talk, the more fascinated I become with how Sarah found her connection with the city and the area she has loved for so long. ‘I did quite a lot of work with City Limits. They had no money, so when they asked you to do something you got paid hardly anything, but they published my theatre pictures which was helpful for me because it meant other theatre companies saw my work.

When we were thrown out of the building in Wapping, three or four of us got together and found this other building off Columbia Rd. At that time, the whole area was all about furniture and furniture restoration. It had no electricity or running water so we had to put all that in. Friends said this was a mad place to be buying, but it’s where I am now and where I have been since the mid-eighties.’

I tell Sarah that it is no wonder that she feels embedded in the East End, but then she tells me how she worked in South Africa, a fundamental experience in shifting her photography away from theatre. ‘I wanted to get more involved with other projects and be more collaborative,’ she confirms.

‘I went to South Africa with a company called Theatre Nomad and met a woman who asked if I would I like to visit a township. ‘I work with a group of women there and I’m really happy to take you in,’ she said, ‘I’m always asking people to come but no-one ever does.’ So we went and met some of the women, and I did some portraits. Then I realised I want to go back and do more, but I had to consider how I could do that because I am not part of that world. I came up with the idea of giving the women disposable cameras so that they took pictures and then I could make portraits of them.’

At the same time Sarah began a project focussing on striptease in the East End. ‘It happened after an exhibition at Shoreditch. The guy who ran the gallery asked ‘Do you think you would be interested in taking pictures of the strippers? I was keen because the photography I had done before had been in the street but I was keen to be within a community.

Lara, one of the strippers, was trying to organise a fanzine. She wanted to have the strippers’ words and some pictures of them, and pull it all together. A lot of the clubs were closing at that point so I felt it was important. There was one on the Hackney Rd and all the strippers worked in four or five different pubs down towards Bishopsgate.  Because she trusted me, Lara took me in and I worked in the way I had worked with the women in Africa. I hung out in the toilets and the back rooms while they were changing. There was a camaraderie between the women, they looked after each other in the same way as the women in South Africa did. This project became the book, Baby Oil & Ice.’

In 1992, Sarah was commissioned by Hackney Museum to document the working lives of women in Hackney and she has continued to photograph women at work ever since, including through her work as Contributing Photographer for Spitalfields Life.

During the hour and a half we spent together I became totally drawn into Sarah’s working life as a photographer. I am amazed by how these projects have taken her into so many different worlds. To Sarah, this is her daily work but to me it is extraordinary. It reminds me of a friend’s catchphrase ‘be bold and proceed.’ When I told Sarah this she said, ‘It’s funny because I never think of myself as being bold at all.’

Sarah Ainslie and The Gentle Author have worked together on many stories over the past sixteen years. In their commitment to supporting and recording lives in their community they are perfectly matched. I wish them every success in reaching their goal of publishing Women at Work: East End Portraits 1992-2025.

Stephen & Paul Rothe. ‘I said look at each other and, of course, what happens is that when they turn back to the camera they relax a bit and smile.‘

Portrait of Daniela and her cousin Sergio outside Beppe’s Cafe in Smithfield

‘Working in this area in the eighties, I was fascinated by Brick Lane market, a surreal place where dramas were being played out in the streets. There was so much chaos, life and energy, with people displaying their personal possessions to sell on the pavements.’

‘Smithfield Market had a strange subterranean feel, where the darkness and glowing lights lit rows of animals hanging off their hooks, reminding me of a Rembrandt. This world I explored has now completely transformed into something much more clinical, losing the soul and humanity of the place it once was.’

Portrait of Rosie in her home in the Grahamstown Township, South Africa

Photos by participants in the Grahamstown project. ‘I had to think of a way of collaborating rather than just going in, taking the pictures and leaving. It was amazing. I went two or three times over a year and then we had an exhibition – part of the Grahamstown Festival. The township had never been part of the festival. It was a great project.’

Dawn, Stripper

‘I was invited to photograph women who worked in the strip pubs in Shoreditch in 1999, it was an invitation into another world. In the very intimate area of the toilets and changing rooms I heard stories about their lives, laughter, banter, boredom, drinking, glamour and camaraderie. I was there when the outfits were chosen for each strip…and there when they returned naked holding their discarded clothes and still wearing their heels.’

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

Click here to support publication of Sarah Ainslie’s WOMEN AT WORK