Made In London
Contrary to popular belief, London continues to be a city of manufacturing and a new book, 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
Copies of MADE IN LONDON can be ordered direct by clicking here
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Francis Wheatley’s Cries Of London
Only a few tickets remain for my lecture on the CRIES OF LONDON next Sunday 11th December at the Art Workers’ Guild as part of the BLOOMSBURY JAMBOREE
Two Bunches a Penny, Primroses, Two Bunches a Penny!
Francis Wheatley exhibited his series of oil paintings entitled the “Cries of London” at the Royal Academy between 1792 and 1795. Two year earlier, the forty-one year old painter had been elected to the Academy in preference to the King’s nominee and, as a consequence, he never secured any further commissions for portraits from the aristocracy. Losing his income entirely, what should have been the crowning glory of his career was its unravelling – Wheatley was declared insolvent in 1793 and struggled to make a living until his death in 1801, when the Royal Academy paid his funeral expenses.
Yet in the midst of this turmoil, Wheatley created these sublime images of street sellers that – although seen at the time as of little consequence beside his aristocratic portraits – are now the works upon which his reputation rests. Born in Covent Garden in 1747, Wheatley was ideally qualified to portray these hawkers because he grew up amongst them and their cries, echoing in the streets around the market. You will recognise the old stone pillars of the market buildings that still stand today in a couple of these pictures, all of which could be located specifically in that vicinity. However, these pictures are far from social reportage as we understand it, and you may notice a certain similarity between many of the women portrayed in these pictures, for whom it is believed Mrs Wheatley – herself a painter and exhibitor at the Royal Academy – was the model. Look again, and you will also see that variants on the same ginger and white terrier occur throughout these paintings too.
In spite of the idealised quality of these pictures, I am drawn to these “Cries of London,” as a project that places working people at the centre of the picture, and represents them as individuals of stature and presence. The body language of subservience is only present when customers are in the frame, as you will see in the Knife Grinder and Cherry Seller below, whilst the lone Strawberry Seller, Match Seller and Primrose Seller all gaze out at us with assured status, as our equals. Taking this a stage further, the final three pictures, the Ballad Seller, the Gingerbread Seller and the Turnip Seller portray sellers and customers meeting eye to eye – dealing on a level – and with a discernible erotic charge in the air.
Although coming too late to save his career, Wheatley was well served by his engravers who created the prints which brought recognition for his “Cries of London,” as the most beautiful and most popular series of prints on this subject of all time, with editions still available into the early twentieth century. In fact, when I examined this set in the archive of the Bishopsgate Institute, I realised that many were familiar to me from chocolate boxes and biscuit tins, and once glimpsed in frames in the houses of elderly relatives and the seaside hotels of my childhood.
Luigi Schiavonetti, born in Bassano in 1765, engraved the first three plates, the Primrose Seller, the Milk Maids and the Orange Seller, with lush velvety stippled tones – a style that was maintained by the three subsequent engravers (Cardon, Vendramini and Gaugain), when Schiavonetti became too successful and expensive for such a modest project. The “Cries of London” were sold at seven shillings and sixpence for a plain set and sixteen shillings coloured, and the fact all thirteen were issued is itself a measure of their popularity.
It touches me to understand that Francis Wheatley chose to paint these “Cries of London” at the time he was losing grip of his life, struggling under the pressure of increasing debt, because they cannot have been an obvious commercial proposition. And I like to surmise that these graceful images celebrate the qualities of the ordinary working people, which Wheatley experienced first-hand, growing up in Covent Garden, and chose to witness in this subtly political set of pictures, existing in noble contrast to the portraits of aristocratic patrons who had shunned him when he was in need.
Milk Below! – This is believed to be the origin of the more recent milkman’s cry, “Milko!”
Sweet China Oranges, Sweet China.
Do you want any matches?
New Mackerel, New Mackerel
Knives, Scissors & Razors to Grind.
Fresh Gathered Peas, Young Hastings.
Round & Sound, Five Pence a Pound, Duke Cherries.
Strawberrys, Scarlet Strawberrys.
Old Chairs to Mend.
A New Love Song, only Ha’pence a Piece.
Hot Spiced Gingerbread, Smoking Hot.
Turnips & Carrots, ho!
Francis Wheatley R.A. looks askance.
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Bloomsbury Jamboree 2022
In gleeful collaboration with Tim Mainstone of Mainstone Press and Joe Pearson of Design for Today, I am hosting our annual Christmas BLOOMSBURY JAMBOREE, a one-day festival of books and print, illustration, talks and seasonal merriment next SUNDAY 11th DECEMBER from 10:30am until 4:30pm.
It takes place at the magnificent ART WORKERS GUILD, 6 Queens Sq, WC1, which was founded in 1884 by members of the Arts & Crafts movement including William Morris and C R Ashbee. These oak panelled rooms lined with oil paintings in a beautiful old house in Bloomsbury offer the ideal venue to celebrate our books, and the authors and artists who create them.
There will be book-signings and a programme of ticketed lectures and readings plus we have invited twenty friends to exhibit, including print and paper makers, small press publishers, toy makers, potters, craft workers and importers for food by small producers.
We need volunteers on Saturday at 6:30pm and all day Sunday and offer bags of books as rewards – if you can help us, please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS OF OUR LECTURES
Art Workers Guild
Art Workers Guild
Art Workers Guild
Print by Rob Ryan
Mug by Rob Ryan
Wooden decorations by Elizabeth Harbour
Owl Watching, print by Mark Hearld printed by Penfold Press
Suzanne Cooper, Paintings Under The Spare Room Bed, published by Mainstone Press
Print by Clare Curtis
Wooden houses made from boxes from Whitechapel Market by Robson Cezar
Plate by Dayna Stevens
Print by Paul Cleden
Print by Chris Brown
Tea towels by Chris Brown
Print by Clare Curtis
Print by Marion Elliott
Felt figures by Marion Elliott
Silver jewellery by Anna Lovell
Paper sculpture by Sato Hisao
Paper sculpture by Sato Hisao
Print by Sarah Young
Map by Herb Lester
Card by Mandy Doubt
Broadway Market Card Game by Design for Today
Pia Matikka will write your name in copperplate (photo by Lucinda Douglas Menzies)
Print by Suzanne Cooper published by Mainstone Press
Wooden house made by Robson Cezar out of fruit boxes from Whitechapel Market
Toy Theatre by Clive Hicks-Jenkins published by Design for Today
Sail Cargo London will be offering imports from small producers by sailing boat.
In Anticipation Of The Festive Season
A swallow at Christmas
George Cruikshank‘s illustrations of yuletide in London 1838-53 from his Comic Almanack remind us how much has changed and also how little has changed. (You can click on any of these images to enlarge)
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve
Christmas dining
Christmas bustle
Boxing day
Hard frost
A picture in the gallery
Theatrical dinner
The Parlour & the Cellar
New Year’s Eve
New Year’s birth
Twelfth Night – Drawing characters
January – Last year’s bills
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George Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet
Piotr Frac, Stained Glass Artist
Last chance to book for my one-day-only EAST END TRADES GUILD TOUR OF SPITALFIELDS this Saturday 3rd December at noon, telling the stories of the different local shops and their origins in this traditional heartland for small traders.
An EETG cloth bag, a copy of Rob Ryan’s map, and small gifts from guild members are included in the ticket, along with refreshments served by a member of the guild at the end of the tour.
CLICK HERE TO BOOK YOUR TICKET
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 Museum of London 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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The Curry Chefs Of Brick Lane
In celebration of Small Business Saturday, I am hosting the one-day-only EAST END TRADES GUILD TOUR OF SPITALFIELDS this Saturday 3rd December at noon, telling the stories of the different local shops and their origins in this traditional heartland for small traders.
An EETG cloth bag, a copy of Rob Ryan’s map, and small gifts from guild members are included in the ticket, along with refreshments served by a member of the guild at the end of the tour.
CLICK HERE TO BOOK YOUR TICKET
This is the ideal moment for a hot curry to warm the spirits, so I set out with photographer Jeremy Freedman to make the acquaintance of some of Brick Lane’s most celebrated Curry Chefs. We were privileged to be granted admission to the modest kitchens tucked away at the back or in the basement of the curry houses, where Head Chefs marshal whole teams of underchefs in a highly formalised hierarchy of responsibility.
It was a relief to step from the cold street into the heat of the kitchens, where we discovered our excited subjects glistening with perspiration, all engaged in the midst of the collective drama that results in curry. We found that these were men who – for the most part – had worked their way up over many years from humble kitchen porters to enjoy their heroic leading roles, granting them the right to a degree of swagger in front of the lense.
We encountered the charismatic Zulen Ahmed, pictured above, standing over his clay-lined tandoori oven beneath the Saffron restaurant where he has been Head Chef for ten years now. Trained by the renowned Curry Chef, Ashik Miah, Zulen served eight years as a porter before ascending to run his own kitchen, now supervising a team consisting of two chefs who do the spicing and make the sauces, a tandoori chef, two cooks who cook rice and poppadums, a second chef who prepares side dishes and a porter who does the washing up. “The Head Chef listens to everybody,” he explained deferentially, with his staff standing around within earshot, and thereby revealing himself to be a natural leader.
Across the road at Masala, we met Head Chef, Shaiz Uddin, whose mother is a chef in Bangladesh. She taught him to cook when he was ten years old. Shaiz told me he worked in her kitchen as Curry Chef for seven years, before he came to London ten years ago to bring the authentic style to Brick Lane, where today he is known for his constant invention in contriving new dishes for his eager customers.
It was quickly apparent that there is a daily routine common to all the curry kitchens of Brick Lane. At eleven each morning, the chefs come in and work until three to prepare the sauces and half cook the meat for the evening. At three they take a break until six, while the underchefs, who arrive at three, prepare the vegetables and salad. Then at six, when the chefs return, the rice is cooked and – now the kitchen is full – everyone works as a team until midnight, when it is time to throw out the leftovers and make the orders for the next day. This is the pattern that rules the lives of all involved. “I like to be busy,” Nurul Alam, Head Chef at Preem & Prithi, informed me blithely – he regularly cooks three hundred curries a night.
“When I started, I dreamed of being a chef,” confessed Jamal Uddin, Head Chef at Bengal Cuisine, referring to his ambition when he came here to Brick Lane from Bangladesh aged nineteen. For the last fourteen years, Jamal has reigned supreme in his kitchen with a Tandoori Chef, a Cook and a Porter working under his supervision as he prepares as many as two hundred curries every day. “I love cooking,” he admitted to me as his gleaming face broke into a smile, though whether it was the intensity of his emotion or the humidity in the kitchen that was the cause of his glowing complexion, I never ascertained.
Syed Jahan Mir, Head Chef at Chillies Restaurant, told me he came to this country at the age of eighteen with his mother and father. Syed was able to learn from his father who was also a chef and they started out together at first, working side by side in the same restaurant. “He’s better than me, but now he is retired to Sunderland I am the best!” Syed asserted, placing a hand on his chest protectively. “Of course I like it,” he confirmed for me with fierce pride, “Twenty-four years, I’ve been doing this, just making curry – it’s my profession.” A poet with spices, Syed creates his own personal mixture for curry. “It’s all the blending,” he emphasised, running his fingers through the golden powder in a steel dish to demonstrate its special properties.
Mohammed Salik still remembers arriving in Britain at the age of seven. “It was quaint and nice here and the people so good, not overcrowded and dirty like my country,” he recalled with a sublime smile of reminiscence, “My dad used to work at the Savoy, but I wanted to be part of the community here in Brick Lane.” Starting as kitchen porter, Mohammed spent the first five years watching and learning and is now Head Chef at Eastern Eye Restaurant. Our brief conversation in the kitchen was eclipsed by the arrival of a bucket on a piece of string from the restaurant above and inside was a yellow slip of paper, occasioning a polite, apologetic glance from Syed as he turned away to study the handwriting and order his team to work, making up the order.
At Cinnamon, Head Chef and veteran of twenty-five years in the business, Daras Miya was keen to introduce me to the two smiley, hardworking young Kitchen Porters under his care, skinny twenty-four year old Belal Ahmed who has been there three months and also works as a waiter, and nineteen year old Mizanor Rahman who started a week ago. Newly married and with little English, wide-eyed Mizanor was experiencing his first winter in London, after marrying his wife who came from Britain to Bangladesh find a husband.
Finally, at the Aladin we met Brick Lane’s most senior Curry Chef, the distinguished Rana Miah who started work in 1980 as a kitchen porter when he arrived from Bangladesh, graduating to chef in 1988. “At that time we served only Bengalis, but by 1995 the customers were all Europeans,” he recalled, describing his tenure as chef at one of Brick Lane’s oldest curry houses, which opened in 1985 and is second only to the Clifton in age. Rana explained that he runs his kitchen upon the system of “Handy Cooking,” based around the use of large stock pots to cook the food. “That’s the way it’s done in Bangladesh,” he confirmed, “This is a traditional restaurant.” As the longest serving Curry Chef, Rana gets frequent consultations from the other chefs on Brick Lane and, remains passionate about his vocation, arriving before everyone each day and leaving after everyone else too.
We never asked the Curry Chefs to cross their arms, but they all assumed this stance, independently and without prompting. It is a posture that proposes professionalism, dignity and self-respect, yet it also indicates a certain reticence, a reserved nature that prefers to let the culinary creations speak for themselves. So I ask you to spare a thought for these proud Curry Chefs, working away like those engineers slaving below deck on the great steam ships of old, they are the unseen and unsung heroes of Brick Lane’s Curry Mile.
Abdul Ahad Forhad, Curry Chef at Monsoon, 78 Brick Lane – “I’m the master of curry!”
Head Chef Shaiz Uddin with his colleague Monul Uddin, Tandoori Chef at Masala, 88 Brick Lane
Nurul Alam, Head Chef at Preem & Prithi, 124/6 Brick Lane, cooks three hundred curries a night
Abdul Tahid, Head Chef at Papadoms, 94 Brick Lane
Jamal Uddin, Head Chef at Bengal Cuisine, 12 Brick Lane
Syed Jahan Mir, Head Chef at Chillies Restaurant, 76 Brick Lane
Mohammed Salik, Head Chef at Eastern Eye Balti House, 63a Brick Lane
Daras Miya, Head Chef at Cinnamon, 134 Brick Lane
Belal Ahmed & Mizanur Rahman, porters at Cinnamon 134, Brick Lane
Rana Miah, Brick Lane’s longest serving Curry Chef stands centre, flanked by Kholilur Rahman and Mizanur Khan in the kitchen of the Aladin, 132 Brick Lane
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
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The Drawing Rooms Of Old London
In celebration of Small Business Saturday, I am hosting the new EAST END TRADES GUILD TOUR OF SPITALFIELDS this Saturday 3rd December at noon, telling the stories of the different local shops and their origins in this traditional heartland for small traders. An EETG cloth bag, a copy of Rob Ryan’s map, and small gifts from guild members are included in the ticket, along with refreshments served by a member of the guild at the end of the tour.
CLICK HERE TO BOOK YOUR TICKET
Impending gloom at the Mansion House, c. 1910
Given the increasing volatility of meteorological conditions as we head into another long winter in the northern hemisphere, I think the only prudent course of action is to withdraw into one of the drawing rooms of old London. Once the last meagre ray of November sunlight has filtered through the lace curtains, highlighting the dust upon the armoire, pull the brocade drapes close and bank up the fire with sea-coal. Stretch out upon the chaise langue, I shall take the sofa and my cat will settle in the fauteuil.
These glass slides once used for magic lantern shows by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute reveal glimpses into the lavish drawing rooms occupied by those at the pinnacle of power in old London, and I can only wonder what the East Enders of a century ago thought when exposed to these strange visions of another world.
State Room Chelsea Royal Hospital, c. 1920
Drawing Room at Lindsay House, Chelsea, former home of the Moravians, 1912
Hall at Fulham Palace, c. 1920
White Drawing Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Dining Room at Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Christians’ Sitting Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Prince Consort’s Writing Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Throne Room at St James’ Palace, c.1910
Prince Consort’s Music Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Prince Consort’s Tapestry Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Empress Eugiene’s Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Bow Saloon, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Prince Consort’s Writing Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Prince Consort’s Music Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Queen Victoria’s Dolls’ House, Kensington Palace, c. 1910
Holland House, c. 1910
Lord Mayor’s Room, Mansion House, c.1910
Drawing Room, Goldsmiths Hall, c. 1920
Drawing Room, Armourers’ Hall, c. 1920
Small Hall at Cordwainers’ Hall, 1920
Drawing Room, Goldsmiths’ Hall, 1920
Drawing Room, Salters’ Hall, c. 1910
Drawing Room, Mercers’ Hall, 1920
Drawing Room, Devonshire House, c. 1910
Ballroom at Devonshire House, c. 1910
Drawing Room, Whitehall Gardens, 1913
Prince Consort’s Dressing Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Belgian Suite Bedroom, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Prince Consort’s Study, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Bow Saloon, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Throne Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910
Vestry of St Lawrence Jewry, c. 1920
Glass slides copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
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