Spitalfields Life

Eleanor Crow’s Everyday

October 1, 2023

by the gentle author

Yesterday, we passed the midway point of our month’s crowdfund campaign and I am grateful to the 99 people who have contributed £10,755, and touched by your messages of encouragement. I am hoping that we can reach the target in the next 2 weeks.

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A Corner of the Kitchen at Dennis Severs’ House

I am delighted to publish this gallery of favourites from Contributing Artist Eleanor Crow‘s forthcoming exhibition of paintings entitled EVERYDAY at Townhouse Spitalfields, opening next Saturday 7th and running until 22nd October.

The Kitchen of Jagir Kaur and Suresh Singh

A Plate of Greengages

A North London Kitchen, Summer Light

A Dorset Kitchen in Summer

A Plate with Fruit

At The Quality Chop House

The Kitchen at Leila’s Cafe

Bread on a Delft Plate

A Corner of a Stockwell Kitchen

Bird How Still Life

Tomatoes and Garlic

Still Life in Dinah’s Kitchen

The Little Dutch Kitchen

St. John Bread & Wine, Morning Light

You may also like to take a look at

Eleanor Crow’s Butchers

Eleanor Crow’s Fishmongers

The Midway Point

September 30, 2023

by the gentle author

CLICK HERE TO VISIT OUR CROWDFUND PAGE & CONTRIBUTE

After two weeks, we have now reached the midway point of our month’s crowdfund campaign and I am grateful to the 84 people who have contributed a total of £10,405, and touched by your messages of encouragement. I am hoping that we can reach the target in the next two weeks, by 14th October.

Please consider helping us take a big step by becoming a patron and receiving a signed fine art print by Doreen Fletcher, signed photographic prints by David Hoffman and Sarah Ainslie, plus an inscribed copy of my forthcoming book.

Although I write on the internet, I still believe in the primacy of books. The world wide web could get wiped out tomorrow but history teaches us that books endure. Publishing books is not an easy task, yet I am passionate to do it when I find stories that I want to cherish, that I know people will love, and that I believe deserve to be dignified in our time and for posterity.

A good example of such a story is Suresh Singh’s ‘A Modest Living, Memoirs of a Cockney Sikh.’ But equally, a collection of photography such as Horace Warner’s ‘Spitalfields Nippers’ or a collection of artworks such Doreen Fletcher’s ‘Paintings’ comprise incredibly important stories that needed to be published.

In different ways, each of the three new books I want to publish is a witness of our times and I am committed to publish them so you can have copies and we can share them with everyone, and they can be a legacy and record of our era.

Fieldgate Mansions, Whitechapel, 1981

David Hoffman’s A Place to Live, Endurance & Joy in the East End 1971-87 is the outcome of more than ten years work in which he photographed the lives of the people around him in Whitechapel. No-other photographer did this with such candour and compassion as David. We have already worked for more than three years to organise this brilliant photography with David’s testimony to create the best possible book. I am publishing David’s work because I believe it is an invaluable social record.

For over ten years now, Hackney Mosaic Project led by Tessa Hunkin has created breathtakingly beautiful and witty public mosaics across the East End. People are astonished when they come upon one, but once they are all collected into a book the monumental scale of the achievement will become evident. I want this to be celebrated and I want people in the future to know that – even in a time of austerity – local people worked together as volunteers to create artworks of enduring beauty to enhance their neighbourhoods.

Anna & Maria Pellicci at their restaurant founded by Elide Pellicci in 1900

Sarah Ainslie’s Women at Work in the East End, 1992 – 2023, collects a unique gallery of exuberant portraits that capture the passion and struggle of the working life. What began as Sarah’s personal project drawing on her archive over thirty years and her work as Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer, has become a panoramic survey of social change and is destined to be the historic record of women’s working lives in London through the past three decades.

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Best wishes for getting the publishing going again! I lived in Fieldgate Mansions in the early 80’s, towards the end of David Hoffman’s time there. I don’t think I ever met him, but it was very moving to see his photos and I look forward to the book being published.

Garth Maeer

Your blog is the first thing I read every morning. It is a joy. I admire all that you do in the community. Thank you.

Christine Chinnery

Best of luck Gentle Author! From your biggest Nuevo México fan!

Melissa Delano

The three publications look fantastic. Particularly looking forward to reading Sarah Ainslie’s Women at Work in the East End

Madeleine Ruggi

Good luck!

Simon Costin

In honour of Tessa Hunkin and her team and their magical work.

Michael Zilkha

Good luck, wish you success

Vivienne Ritchie

Delighted owner of many of your titles and looking forward to buying the Mosaics book. Your blog a constant source of delight for many years now. Thank you

Raymond Golland

Supporting because we’d love to see Sarah Ainslie’s book published, alongside all the other great projects

Maya Corry

Brilliant projects! Amie and Jason x

Amie Corry

Living in Wisconsin, USA, your words and images transport me to a different time and place that need to be known and are impossible to see without you. Thank you for your dedication to history.

Maria Rogers

David Hoffman’s East End

September 29, 2023

by the gentle author

Starting in 2013, Spitalfields Life Books published 15 books over 6 years until the pandemic shut us down. Now we are ready to begin again and are crowdfunding to raise enough money to cover production of our next 3 books. We have raised £10,005 so far.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT OUR CROWDFUND PAGE AND CONTRIBUTE

Thank you for all you do to document and celebrate the human history of the East End. Hugh Valentine

I am so looking forward to the publication of these books – I always read your blog and really enjoy your writing. Good luck! Sarah Lewington

All the very best of luck with this venture. Dina Fawcett

To support GA, the authors, artists, illustrators & photographers in the production of more beautiful books. Hellen Martin

May you and Spitalfields life, blog, community and books continue to inspire, flourish, stir and resist..thank you. Silvervanwoman

Good luck. I’ve got quite a few of your books and will look forward to more. Alison Pilkington

I have great admiration for The Gentle Author. TGA works incredibly hard and deserves all the support that we can give. Tim Sayer

Valuable historically and personally memorable for different aspects of the East End to be recorded, visually and orally so the streetscape, cultural vitality and diversity of voices are not lost. Jude Bloomfield

The daily blog from Spitalfields Life is life affirming. Best wishes with the publishing venture. Kate Amis

The Gentle Author brings great enjoyment to me every morning. Lynn MacKay

Looking forward to all three books – especially the mosaics, scattered like stardust, and free for all to enjoy…as all great art should be. Josephine Eglin

Dear Gentle Author, I am a great admirer of Tessa Hunkin’s work and would like to support the publication of your book about her and her mosaics. Many thanks for the work you do for so many and the interesting stories you share with all of us readers. Best of luck with this and warm crispy autumn wishes, Matilda Moreton

Good luck with the publication fund raiser. I loved working with Sarah Ainslie on various Spitalfields Life pieces, and I’m excited for her work, and the others, to be published in book form. Rosie Dastgir

I love the books! Good luck! Mary Winch

Love the books – hope the funding project succeeds. Edward Gillman

Good luck with your worthy venture. Keith Brennan

Amazing books … keep going. Sophie Alderson

Precious publications from a very special place … Oh here’s to Spitalfields lives ! Sophie Thompson

I am a great-granddaughter of man born in Bethnal Green. Proud to be an East Ender! Pamela Henning

Wonderful projects. Sensorinet

Cracking beautiful relevant stuff !! Bonne chance xx Oliver Lazarus

I love your books, which would not be published anywhere else. Long may you continue. Melanie McGrath

Books open worlds, make great companions, are lovely gifts, and keep our minds from growing stale. And they ask for little in return! Long live books! Jennifer Newbold

So pleased you’re re-launching SL Books, which are all beautifully produced and feature the work of such excellent photographers, artists and writers. Julia Meadows

Good luck – your books are brilliant. Joan Isaac

Today we preview David Hoffman’s book:

A PLACE TO LIVE: ENDURANCE & JOY IN THE EAST END 1971-87

David Hoffman’s bold, humane photography records a lost decade, speaking vividly to our own times. Living in Whitechapel through the 70s, David documented homelessness, racism, the incursion of developers and the rise of protest in startlingly intimate and compassionate pictures to compose a vital photographic testimony of resilience.

“The old East End was disappearing as I took these photographs, being able to bring back a glimpse of its spirit in this book means a lot to me.”

David Hoffman

“I moved to the dilapidated slums of Whitechapel from the dilapidated slums of North Kensington in 1970. First to 19a Chicksand St which was soon demolished, then to 17 Black Lion Yard. When that was predictably demolished in 1973, I squatted one of the tinned-up tenement flats in Fieldgate Mansions, replacing the council concrete-filled loo and building a darkroom.

With a Nikon F and 35mm lens hanging from my wrist, I wandered the strange, chaotic time-slipped streets trying to work out what photography was about. I never did find out. These photos ended up as contact sheets buried and forgotten beneath the protest photography that became my specialism in the late seventies.

As I now digitise forty years’ work, they’ve floated back into sight. I think they’ve matured nicely over the decades.”

The Mosaic Makers Of Hackney Downs

September 28, 2023

by the gentle author

CLICK HERE TO VISIT OUR CROWDFUND PAGE AND CONTRIBUTE

Today we preview Tessa Hunkin’s book

TESSA HUNKIN & HACKNEY MOSAIC PROJECT

Tessa Hunkin and Hackney Mosaic Project have created breathtakingly beautiful and witty mosaics in locations all across the East End over the past ten years. In the process, Tessa has won the reputation as the pre-eminent mosaic designer in this country while leading a community endeavour that has elevated the lives of hundreds of participants.

“A beautiful book about Hackney Mosaic Project will be the best reward for all the people who have worked on the mosaics, bringing their achievement to a wider public and giving them the recognition they so well deserve.”

Tessa Hunkin

You may recall my friends the Mosaic Makers of Hoxton led by artist Tessa Hunkin. When they have moved up to Hackney Downs and established their workshop in the pavilion, they applied their magical talents to decorating an open air theatre in the children’s playground.

I discovered Tessa and her team hard at work to fulfil their ambition of covering the entire theatre with mosaic. Inspired by a trip to Jordan, Tessa revealed to me that her design is “loosely based upon Roman hunting scenes, but without the blood.” Each of the mosaic makers undertook to create one of the animals and Tessa’s role was to unify their contributions into a harmonious whole. Up here at the top of Hackney, upon what was once an ancient piece of common land, it makes complete sense to come upon these fearsome wild creatures rendered in such magnificent timeless style.

Stalwarts from Hoxton, Nikky Turner and Ken Edwards were there to greet me as I entered the workshop where the mosaic makers sat around a large table, joined by new members as the enthusiastic band has grown. A hush of concentration prevailed, broken only by the incessant snapping of terrazzo being cut to size, rather like that of a band of squirrels cracking nuts. Two days a week you will find them there in the pavilion on Hackney Downs, and every other Saturday afternoon when anyone is welcome to lend a hand. “Being here in the park, we’ve had a quite a lot of local people come to join us,” Tessa admitted, “people between jobs or off work for some reason – and lots of Italians, mosaic is a magnet for Italians.”

Even as I sat with the mosaic makers, a man on a bicycle leaned in to deliver his verdict on the work so far. “If that mosaic was a meal, it’d be from a Michelin starred restaurant,” he declared authoritatively and cycled off down the path, leaving the makers to continue with their work in placid silence.

It has been inspiring to see Tessa Hunkin’s skilfully wrought mosaics come to fruition in recent years, enriching the environment of the East End with their lyrical imagery – and rare to come across works of art that successfully combine such a sophisticated aesthetic flair with a genuine popular appeal.

Ken Edwards made the lion

Design for a side panel

Gabi made the leopard

Design for a side panel

Nikky Turner made the monkey

Design for the back wall by Tessa Hunkin

You may also like to read about

The Mosaic Makers of Hoxton

The Hoxton Varieties Mosaic

Henry Silk, Artist

September 27, 2023

by the gentle author

CLICK HERE TO VISIT OUR CROWDFUND PAGE AND CONTRIBUTE

Henry worked at his Uncle Abraham’s basket shop in Bow

Here is David Buckman’s profile of Henry Silk in advance of my illustrated lecture, EAST END VERNACULAR, Artists who painted London’s East End Streets in the 20th Century, next week in the Hanbury Hall on Tuesday 3rd October at 7pm. Click here for tickets

Which of the members of the members of the East London Group of painters most closely embodied what the Group stood for ? There are many advocates for Archibald Hattemore, Elwin Hawthorne, Cecil Osborne, Harold & Walter Steggles, and Albert Turpin – all painters from backgrounds that were not arty in any conventional sense who became inspired by their teacher John Cooper, the founder of the Group. Yet for some, the shadowy figure of Henry Silk, creator of highly personal and poetically understated images, is pre-eminent.

Silk’s talent was quickly recognised as far away as America, even while the Group was just establishing itself in the early thirties. In December 1930, when the second Group show was held in the West End at Alex. Reid & Lefevre, the national press reported that over two-thirds of pictures were sold, listing a batch of works bought by public collections. The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times revealed that, in addition to British purchases, the far-away Public Gallery of Toledo in Ohio had bought Silk’s ‘Still Life’ for six guineas.

American links continued when, early in 1933, Helen McCloy filing an insightful survey of the group’s achievements for the Boston Evening Transcript, judged Silk to have “the keenest technical sense of all the limitations and possibilities of paint.” Coincident with McCloy’s article, Hope Christie Skillman in the College Art Association’s publication Parnassus, distinguished Silk as “perhaps the most original and personal of the Group,” finding in his works such as The Railway Track, The Platelayers, The Tyre Dump and The Wireless Set, “beauty where we were taught not to see it.”

Silk’s early life is obscure. He was an East Ender, born on Christmas Day 1883, who worked as a basket maker for an uncle, Abraham Silk, at his workshop and shop in the Bow Rd. Fruit baskets were in great demand then and men making baskets became features of Silk’s pictures. “He used to work for three weeks at basket-making and spend the fourth in the pub,” Group member Walter Steggles remembered, describing Silk’s erratic work and drink habits. Yet Steggles also spoke of Silk with affection, admitting “He was a kind-hearted man who always looked older than his years.”

Silk was the uncle of Elwin Hawthorne, one of the leading members of the group, and lived for a time with that family at 11 Rounton Rd in Bow. Elwin’s widow Lilian – who, as Lilian Leahy, also showed with the group – remembered Silk as “generous to others but mean to himself. He would use an old canvas if someone gave it to him rather than buy a new one.” This make-do-and-mend ethos was common among the often-hard-up Group members when it came to framing too. Cooper directed them to E. R. Skillen & Co, in Lamb’s Conduit St, where Walter Steggles used to buy old frames that could be cut to size.

During the First World War, the young Silk was already sketching. Even on military service in his early thirties, during which he was gassed, he would draw on whatever he could find to hand. By the mid-twenties, he was attending classes at the Bethnal Green Men’s Institute and exhibited when the Art Club had its debut show at Bethnal Green Museum early in 1924. The Daily Chronicle ran a substantial account of the spring 1927 exhibition, highlighting Henry Silk, the basket maker, whose paintings depicted “Zeppelins and were bought by an officer ‘for a bob.’”

Yorkshireman, John Cooper, who had trained at The Slade, taught at Bethnal Green and, when he moved to evening classes at the Bow & Bromley Evening Institute, he took many students with him including George Board, Archibald Hattemore, Elwin Hawthorne, Henry Silk, the Steggles brothers and Albert Turpin. They were members of the East London Art Club that had its exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in the winter of 1928, part of which transferred to what is now the Tate Britain early in 1929. These activities prompted the series of Lefevre Galleries annual East London Group shows throughout the thirties, with their sales to many notable private collectors and public galleries, and huge media coverage.

Henry Silk was a prolific artist. He contributed a significant number of works to the Whitechapel show in 1928, remained a significant exhibitor at the East London Group-associated appearances, showed with the Toynbee Art Club and at Thos Agnew & Sons. Among his prestigious buyers were the eminent dealer Sir Joseph Duveen, Tate director Charles Aitken and the poet and artist Laurence Binyon. Another was the writer J. B. Priestley, Cooper’s friend, who over the years garnered an impressive and well-chosen modern picture collection. Silk was also regarded highly by his East London Group peers, Murroe FitzGerald, Hawthorne’s wife Lilian and Walter Steggles, who all acquired works of his.

As each of the East London Group artists acquired individual followings as a result of the annual and mixed exhibitions, the Lefevre Galleries astutely organised solo shows for several of them. Elwin Hawthorne, Brynhild Parker and the brothers Harold & Walter Steggles all benefited. Yet, in advance of these, in 1931 Silk had a solo show of watercolours at the recently established gallery Walter Bull & Sanders Ltd, in Cork St. The small exhibition was characterised by an array of still lifes and interiors. Writing in The Studio magazine two years earlier, having visited Cooper’s Bow classe, F. G. Stone noted that Silk often saw “a perfect design from an unusual angle, and he has a Van Goghian love of chairs and all simple things.”

Cooper urged his students to paint the world around them and Silk met the challenge by depicting landscapes near his home in the East End, also sketching while on holiday in Southend and as far away as Edinburgh. Writing the foreword to the catalogue of the second group exhibition at Lefevre in December 1930, the critic R. H. Wilenski said that French artists were fascinated by the “cool, frail London light.” and many asked him “what English artists have made these aspects of London the essential subject of their work.” He responded, “The next time a French artist talks to me in this manner I shall tell him of the East London Group, and the members’ names that I shall mention first in this connection will be Elwin Hawthorne, W. J. Steggles and Henry Silk.”

Even after the East London Group held its final show at Lefevre in 1936, Henry Silk continued to show in the East End, until his death of cancer aged only sixty-four on September 24th 1948.

Thorpe Bay

St James’ Rd, Old Ford

Old Houses, Bow (Walter Steggles Bequest)

My Lady Nicotine

Snow (Walter Steggles Bequest)

Still Life (Walter Steggles Bequest)

Basket Makers (Courtesy of Dorian Osborne)

Boots, Polish and Brushes

The Bedroom

Bedside chair (Courtesy of Dorian Osborne)

Hat on table, 1932 (courtesy of Doncaster Museum)

Henry Silk and his sister

Walter Crane’s Windows In Clapton

September 26, 2023

by the gentle author

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I have often seen the tall spire at Clapton from the footpath along the River Lea, but only recently I climbed the hill from the river to visit for the first time. Built as the Church of the Ark of the Covenant by the Agapemonites in 1892, it became the Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd after 1956 and then began a new life in 2011 as the Cathedral of the Nativity of Our Lord, a Georgian Orthodox Cathedral. Yet despite these different occupants, it remains almost unchanged since it was built in 1896.

My quest was to view Walter Crane’s windows which are considered to be his greatest achievement in stained glass and were described by Sir John Betjeman as”the richest Victorian glass I have ever seen” maintaining that “it made Burne-Jones and Rossetti’s glass look pale by comparison.”

On either side of the nave are a series of pairs of lancet windows with lyrical designs of fruit and flowers, and it is these benign images that welcome the visitor, glowing within the darkness of the church beneath the heavy wooden roof lowering overhead.

It is in the west windows that a certain surreal melodrama creeps in. Here you will discover a Blakean tableau of the Rising Sun of Righteousness, flanked by personifications of the Powers of Darkness – Disease and Death, and Sin and Shame. The Art Journal had a quite a lot to say about these in 1896 which I quote below.

The submission of women to men was a central tenet of the Agapemonites, a bizarre misogynist sect founded by Henry Prince in 1856 that advocated polygamy for men and died out in 1956.

Thankfully Walter Crane interpreted his commission loosely, portraying nine female figures and a single male who is not presented as dominant. Yet there is a grotesquely seductive morbidity in the portrayal of the Powers of Darkness, who are embodied as female which must have made uncomfortable viewing for the long-suffering women of the Agapemonites.

Outside, on the exterior of the church, the effect is as much Gothic horror as Victorian gothic. On the corners of the spire sit outsize sculptures of the symbols of the four evangelists – the winged ox for Luke, the winged lion for Mark, the eagle for John and the angel for Matthew, each trampling underfoot a human figure, representing the trials of earthly existence: Death, Sorrow, Crying and Pain.

It is a strange experience to confront these brutally sentimental representations of melancholy descending to nihilism, the relics of a sinister cult extinguished a generation ago reduced now to mere curiosities.

Pomegranates

Fig

Briar rose

Iris

Poppies in the corn

Olives

Grapes

Lilies

“The side windows of the nave, nine in all, are filled with flower and fruit designs, in considerably paler colour than the figure compositions. These include the rose, the fig, the pomegranate, the bay, the lily, the vine, the olive, corn and poppies, and the iris. They are naturally of less interest than the subject windows; but they are boldly, simply, and effectively treated, and in a fashion that is thoroughly glass-like, without too nearly following the lines of old work. Perhaps they are a trifle large in scale. It is characteristic of the thoroughness of the artist that no two of these windows are alike; and, more than that, there is absolutely no repetition whatever in them: even when one light seems at first sight to be the counterpart of the other, it is not actually so; each, it will be seen upon comparison, has been separately drawn.” Art Journal 1896

The Rising Sun of Righteousness (Photo by John Salmon)

“Thence rises the Sun, and from its rays issue the forms of Angels with flaming wings bearing a scroll inscribed, ‘Then shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings.’ To the right and left of the window stand the figures of a man with upstretched hands, saluting, and a woman with hands clasped in contemplation. ” The Art Journal 1896

Disease and Death

“There is something most appropriately morbid in the many-hued raiment of Disease, crossed by forked tongues of flame; but it lends itself to strangely fascinating colour. The head is crowned, Medusa-like, with wriggling snakes, in place of locks of hair. The action of the arm behind the head, and the hand clutching the drapery on her breast, are indicative of intense pain. The white -shrouded figure of Death counterbalances in colour the figure of Sin. It again is encircled by a snake, which fulfils much the same decorative purpose as before; but in this case Death’s livid hand grips it by the neck. The other hand, uplifted, lets fall a blood- stained dart. It is a grim and ghastly figure enough; but at the same time admirably decorative. Imagine a white-clad figure, with greenish flesh and purplish wings, against a blue background, the blue and purple echoed, in fainter key, in the snake against the drapery. Its coils break the mass of white, whilst the greenish flames below, growing yellower as they begin to wrap the figure about, carry the lighter tones of colour into the lower part of the window. A clever point in the construction of these designs is the way the faces of Disease and Shame are artfully set in the colour of the drapery, as Death’s dark visage is wrapped in the folds of her white garment. To have made these painful subjects not only dramatically impressive, but at the same time decoratively delightful, is something of a triumph in design” Art Journal 1896

Sin and Shame

“Sin, draped in white, the cloak of pretended innocence, huddles herself together in the attitude of fear and shrinking; her bat-shaped wings break with deep purple the blue sky which forms the background to the greater part of the window. The blue below represents the sea, leaden towards the horizon, against which are seen flames, radiating, it may be presumed, from the Sun of Righteousness. A snake, encircling the figure, whispers the counsel of evil; and fulfils at the same time the decorative function of connecting, by the prismatic colour of its scales, the purple of the wings above with the colour of the flames below.

No less expressive is the companion figure of Shame, crimson-robed, with dull green wings, ruddy-tipped; about her sombre figure also leap the flames; her bent head, and the painful clutch of her hand upon it, are full of meaning.” Art Journal 1896

On the spire are the symbols of the four evangelists – the winged ox for Luke, the winged lion for Mark, the eagle for John and the angel for Matthew, each trampling underfoot a human figure, symbolising the trials of earthly existence: Death, Sorrow, Crying and Pain.

The Brady Girls

September 25, 2023

by the gentle author

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The Brady Girls with The Beatles, 1964

How glorious it is to publish these joyful photographs of the Brady Girls’ Club at the Brady Centre in Hanbury St which are now the subject of an exhibition WE ARE THE BRADY GIRLS, from 6th October to 7th November at the Atrium Gallery, London Metropolitan University, Goulston St, E1 7TP.

The Brady Girls’ Club ran from 1920 to 1970. Led by Miriam Moses OBE JP – the first female mayor of Stepney – the Club supported the community during the war years and after, offering shelter and practical help to hundreds of young women and families.

The exhibition features a collection of photography which was rediscovered in 2016 and has inspired a project funded by the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe to record video histories of former members of the Brady Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs.