At Margolis Silver
I am giving an illustrated lecture of Spitalfields & Whitechapel in Old Photographs on Thursday 16th October at 7pm at the Hanbury Hall in Hanbury St, E1 6QR. CLICK HERE TO BOOK TICKETS
Kudret Yirtici, Polisher
There are still traditional manufacturing industries thriving in the East End – as Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I were delighted to discover when we visited Margolis Silver, market-leaders in silverware, at their factory in London Fields. Here we found a band of highly-skilled silversmiths with proud dirty faces, designing and manufacturing silverware for the swankiest West End hotels, restaurants and clubs, employing techniques that have not changed in centuries.
Upstairs in his solitary garret, we met the most senior member of staff, Albert Alot, a virtuoso metal spinner of a lifetime’s experience who can take a disc of copper and expertly spin it into a cup on a lathe with all the flamboyant magic of Rumplestiltskin. Down below, led by Richard Courcha whose father started the company half a century ago, we found the polishers at work, cleaning the copper vessels prior to plating. With their grimy visages and overalls topped off by a characterful array of hats, they were a charismatic band who generously welcomed us into their lair and tolerated our nosy questions with patience and good humour. Next door, Chloe Robertson supervised the electroplating, first with nickel and then silver, cheerfully presiding over two enormous boiling vats of steaming hydrochloric acid and livid green arsenic bubbling away.
There is a compelling alchemy to this fascinating process which, thanks to immense skills of the silversmiths, transforms the raw material of copper sheets into sophisticated gleaming silverware, sufficient to grace the grandest tables with its luxurious allure. It is exceptional to visit a workshop such as this, where everyone takes such obvious delight in their collective achievement.
Away from the workshop, Valerie Lucas runs an office stacked to the roof with myriad examples of silverware, teapots, coffeepots, condiments, basins, bowls and plates of every imaginable design. Here we met director Lawrence Perovetz, who is of Huguenot descent and cherishes the living tradition of Huguenot silversmiths in London through his work.
Yet all these people, machines and processes are crammed into a tiny factory that few in London Fields even know exists. As Polisher Pascal Fernandes quipped, summing it up succinctly for me, “It’s a little house of treasures this is!”
Arthur Alot – “I’m from Plaistow and I was born in the war. I’ve been doing this all my life, since I did an apprenticeship down at Shaw’s Metal Spinners in Stratford years and years ago. They’ve gone now. Years ago in the twenties, the old spinners used to walk in dressed in spats and whatever. I moved to a factory in the Holloway Rd where I met this spinner, a proper one, who had come out of Hungary at the time of the revolution. He had been taught by the sixth best spinner in Hungary and he taught me and my brothers. I have taught a few who are starting on their own.”
Arthur spins a cup out of a disc of copper
Arthur Alot, Metal Spinner
Richard Courcha – “I am the factory manager and I do polishing. It was my father, Thomas Courcha’s business, he started it in 1968. He was a metal polisher and he went into partnership with Johnny Mansfield in a little factory in North London and then, when this place came up for grabs in 1968, they moved in. The company was called TC Plating Ltd – Tommy Courcha Plating in full.
I came here all the time as child, every other Saturday in the back of my dad’s old red Escort van. It was a bustling place. I used to help out with the makers, there were ten makers working here during the late seventies. In those days we manufactured for the retail market, producing gallery trays, punchbowls and wine coolers that were sold in the West End. Designers would bring in their drawings, and my dad and his team would make the moulds and conjure them up.
The retail side dropped off in the eighties because of cheap products coming in from India. So then we moved into restoring antique silverware. About ten years ago, it all changed again. This was around the time I met Lawrence who had this idea of supplying hotels and now we are joined at the hip.
I came here to work in 1982. I did not have any plans to do anything else. It was a bustling business and my brother was here as well until he retired. I suppose I like the job. It is what I do. It is in my blood. It is what I grew up with. After thirty-six years, I know how to do making.”
Collin Foru-berkoh, Polisher
Bradley Hitchman – “I am a silversmith and maker of thirty-four years. When I was thirteen, I moved to Morden and the next door neighbour owned this company. A few years after I left school, I was doing a training scheme to be an engineer but I thought ‘Silversmith’ sounded more glamorous than ‘Engineer.’ So I came here. It was a struggle at first. It was very repetitive, hundreds of this, thousands of that. The same thing over and over again. But when it comes to doing it now it is second nature. Once I got the hang of things and things came easier, it was no longer boring – you just got on with it. I have always liked working with my hands. I like the creative side of this work, you can take a piece of metal and turn it into something – like this dessert trolley! Pretty much everything here is bespoke. ”
Pascal Fernandes – “I am a polisher and a finisher. Way back in 1976, I got an apprenticeship as a polisher and I was taught by three very good people. It is very dangerous work because the machines show you no mercy, they can take your hand off. At first, I found it boring but over the years you learn from other people who might do something differently. You do not necessarily copy them because each has an art of their own. My way is the way I was taught originally by a man who was taught by the best. It is creative and I took it as my living, so I must like it. You learn your lessons as you go along. You have got to take the good with the bad.”
Chloe Robertson – “I am a maker and I do electroplating as well. I did a degree in Design in Liverpool and picked working with metal and wood. I won ten thousand pounds start-up business funding and I funded myself to go to Bishopsland which is a post-graduate college for silversmiths and jewellers, and then I won an award as ‘Woodturner of the Year’ which meant I got a free workshop for a year. Then this job popped up and I have been here two years. I am the newbie, but I love this work and I intend to stay at least ten years. It is fascinating working alongside these guys who have been here for all these years, I learn something new every day. Some of these techniques they know are mind-boggling.”
Chloe plates the copper with nickel in a vat of boiling arsenic
Chloe dries the plated objects in a box of grain
Lawrence Perovetz, Director & Valerie Lucas, Secretary, Margolis Silver
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
You may also like to look at these nearby manufacturers
At Embassy Electrical Supplies
I am giving an illustrated lecture of Spitalfields & Whitechapel in Old Photographs on Thursday 16th October at 7pm at the Hanbury Hall in Hanbury St, E1 6QR. CLICK HERE TO BOOK TICKETS
Mehmet Murat
It comes as no surprise to learn that at Embassy Electrical Supplies in Clerkenwell, you can buy lightbulbs, fuses and cables, but rather more unexpected to discover that, while you are picking up your electrical hardware, you can also purchase olive oil, strings of chili peppers and pomegranate molasses courtesy of the Murat family groves in Cyprus and Turkey.
At certain fashionable restaurants nearby, “Electrical Shop Olives” are a popular feature on the menu, sending customers scurrying along to the Murats’ premises next morning to purchase their own personal supply of these fabled delicacies that have won acclaim in the global media and acquired a legendary allure among culinary enthusiasts.
How did such a thing come about, that a Clerkenwell electrical shop should be celebrated for olive oil? Mehmet Murat is the qualified electrician and gastronomic mastermind behind this singular endeavour. I found him sitting behind his desk at the rear of the shop, serving customers from his desk and fulfilling their demands whether electrical or culinary, or both, with equal largesse.
“I am an electrician by trade,” he assured me, just in case the fragrance of wild sage or seductive mixed aromas of his Mediterranean produce stacked upon the shelves might encourage me to think otherwise.
“I arrived in this country from Cyprus in 1955. My father came a few years earlier, and he got a job and a flat before he sent for us. In Cyprus, he was a barber and, according to our custom, that meant he was also a dentist. But he got a job as an agent travelling around Cyprus buying donkeys for Dr Kucuk, the leader of the Turkish Cypriots at that time – the donkeys were exported and sold to the British Army in Egypt. What he did with the money he earned was to buy plots of land around the village of Louroujina, where I was born, and plant olive saplings. He and my mother took care of them for the first year and after that they took care of themselves. Once they came to the UK, they asked relatives to watch over the groves. They used to send us a couple of containers of olive oil for our own use each year and sold the rest to the co-operative who sold it to Italians who repackaged it and sold it as Italian oil.
I trained as an electrician when I left school and I started off working for C.J. Bartley & Co in Old St. I left there and became self-employed, wiring Wimpy Bars, Golden Egg Restaurants and Mecca Bingo Halls. I was on call twenty-four hours and did electrical work for Faye Dunaway, the King of Jordan’s sister and Bill Oddie, among others. Then I bought this shop in 1979 and opened up in 1982 selling electrical supplies.
In 2002, when my father died, I decided I was going to bring all the olive oil over from Louroujina and bottle it all myself, which I still do. But when we started getting write-ups and it was chosen as the best olive oil by New York Magazine, I realised we had good olive oil. We produce it as we would for our own table. There is no other secret, except I bottle it myself – bottling plants will reheat and dilute it.
If you were to come to the village where I was born, you could ask any shopkeeper to put aside oil for your family use from his crop. I don’t see any difference, selling it here in my electrical shop in Clerkenwell. It makes sense because if I were to open up a shop selling just oil, I’d be losing money. The electrical business is still my bread and butter income, but many of the workshops that were my customers have moved out and the Congestion Charge took away more than half my business.
Now I have bought a forty-five acre farm in Turkey. It produces a thousand tons of lemons in a good year, plus pomegranate molasses, sweet paprika, candied walnuts and chili flakes. We go out and forage wild sage, wild oregano, wild St John’s wort and wild caper shoots. My wife is there at the moment with her brother who looks after the farm, and her other brother looks after the groves in Cyprus.”
Then Mehmet poured a little of his precious pale golden olive oil from a green glass bottle into a beaker and handed it to me, with instructions. The name of his farm, Murat Du Carta, was on the label beneath a picture of his mother and father. He explained I was to sip the oil, and then hold it in my mouth as it warmed to experience the full flavour, before swallowing it. The deliciously pure oil was light and flowery, yet left no aftertaste on the palate. I picked up a handful of the wild sage to inhale the evocative scent of a Mediterranean meadow, and Mehmet made me up a bag containing two bottles of olive oil, truffle-infused oil, marinated olives, cured olives, chili flakes and frankincense to carry home to Spitalfields.
We left the darkness of the tiny shop, with its electrical supplies neatly arranged upon the left and its food supplies tidily stacked upon the right. A passing cyclist came in to borrow a wrench and the atmosphere was that of a friendly village store. Outside on the pavement, in the sunshine, we joined Mark Page who forages truffles for Mehmet, and Mehmet’s son Murat (known as Mo). “I do the markets and I run the shop, and I like to eat,” he confessed to me with a wink.
Carter, the electrical shop cat.
From left to right, Mark Page (who forages truffles), Murat Murat (known as Mo) and Mehmet Murat.
Embassy Electical Supplies, 76 Compton St, Clerkenwell, EC1V 0BN
The Harvest Festival Of The Sea
I am giving an illustrated lecture of Spitalfields & Whitechapel in Old Photographs on Thursday 16th October at 7pm at the Hanbury Hall in Hanbury St, E1 6QR. CLICK HERE TO BOOK TICKETS
Today I preview the Fish Harvest Festival which will take place this year on Sunday 12th October at 11am at St Mary-At-Hill, the Billingsgate Church, Lovat Lane, Eastcheap, EC3R 8EE
Frank David, Billingsgate Porter for sixty years
Thomas à Becket was the first rector of St Mary-at-Hill in the City of London, the ancient church upon a rise above the old Billingsgate Market, where each year at this season the Harvest Festival of the Sea is celebrated – to give thanks for the fish of the deep that we all delight to eat, and which have sustained a culture of porters and fishmongers here for centuries.
The market itself may have moved out to the Isle of Dogs in 1982, but that does not stop the senior porters and fishmongers making an annual pilgrimage back up the cobbled hill where, as young men, they once wheeled barrows of fish in the dawn. For one day a year, this glorious church designed by Sir Christopher Wren is recast as a fishmonger’s shop, with an artful display of gleaming fish and other exotic ocean creatures spilling out of the porch, causing the worn marble tombstones to glisten, and imparting an unmistakeably fishy aroma to the entire building. Yet it all serves to make the men from Billingsgate feel at home, in their chosen watery element.
Frank David and Billy Hallet, two senior porters in white overalls, both took off their hats – or “bobbins” as they are called – to greet me. These unique pieces of headgear once enabled the porters to balance stacks of fish boxes upon their heads, while the brim protected them from any spillage. Frank – a veteran of eighty-four years old – who was a porter for sixty years from the age of eighteen, showed me the bobbin he had worn throughout his career, originally worn by his grandfather Jim David in Billingsgate in the eighteen nineties and then passed down by his father Tim David.
Of sturdy wooden construction, covered with canvas and bitumen, stitched and studded, these curious glossy black artefacts seemed almost to have a life of their own. “When you had twelve boxes of kippers on your head, you knew you’d got it on,” quipped Billy, displaying his “brand new” hat, made only in the nineteen thirties. A mere stripling of sixty-eight, still fit and healthy, Billy started his career at Christmas 1959 in the old Billingsgate market carrying boxes on his bobbin and wheeling barrows of fish up the incline past St Mary-at-Hill to the trucks waiting in Eastcheap. Caustic that the City of London revoked the porters’ licences after more than one hundred and thirty years, “Our traditions are disappearing,” he confided to me in the churchyard, rolling his eyes and striking a suitably elegiac Autumnal note.
Proudly attending the spectacular display of fish in the porch, I met Eddie Hill, a fishmonger who started his career in 1948. He recalled the good times after the war when fish was cheap and you could walk across Lowestoft harbour stepping from one herring boat to the next. “My father said, ‘We’re fishing the ocean dry and one day it’ll be a luxury item,'” he told me, lowering his voice, “And he was right, now it has come to pass.” Charlie Caisey, a fishmonger who once ran the fish shop opposite Harrods, employing thirty-five staff, showed me his daybook from 1967 when he was trading in the old Billingsgate market. “No-one would believe it now!” he exclaimed, wondering at the low prices evidenced by his own handwriting, “We had four people then who made living out of just selling parsley and two who made a living out of just washing fishboxes.”
By now, the swelling tones of the organ installed by William Hill in 1848 were summoning us all to sit beneath Wren’s cupola and the Billingsgate men, in their overalls, modestly occupied the back row as the dignitaries of the City, in their dark suits and fur trimmed robes, processed to take their seats at the front. We all sang and prayed together as the church became a great lantern illuminated by shifting patterns of autumn sunshine, while the bones of the dead slumbered peacefully beneath our feet. The verses referring to “those who go down the sea in ships and occupy themselves upon the great waters,” and the lyrics of “For those in peril on the sea” reminded us of the plain reality upon which the trade is based, as we sat in the elegantly proportioned classical space and the smell of fish drifted among us upon the currents of air.
In spite of sombre regrets at the loss of stocks in the ocean and unease over the changes in the industry, all were unified in wonder at miracle of the harvest of our oceans and by their love of fish – manifest in the delight we shared to see such an extravagant variety displayed upon the slab in the church. And I enjoyed my own personal Harvest Festival of the Sea in Spitalfields for the next week, thanks to the large bag of fresh fish that Eddie Hill slipped into my hand as I left the church.
St Mary-at-Hill was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren in 1677
Senior fishmongers from Billingsgate worked from dawn to prepare the display of fish in the church
Fishmonger Charlie Caisey’s market book from 1967
Charlie Caisey explains the varieties of fish to the curious
Gary Hooper, President of the National Federation of Fishmongers, welcomes guests to the church
Frank David and Billy Hallet, Billingsgate Porters
Frank’s “bobbin” is a hundred and twenty years old and Billy’s is “brand new” from the nineteen thirties
Billy Hallet’s porter’s badge, now revoked by the City of London
Jim Shrubb, Beadle of Billingsgate with friends
The mace of Billingsgate, made in 1669
John White (President & Alderman), Michael Welbank (Master) and John Bowman (Secretary) of the Billingsgate Ward Club
Crudgie, Sailor, Biker and Historian
Dennis Ranstead, Sidesman Emeritus and Graham Mundy, Church Warden of St Mary-at-Hill
Senior Porters and Fishmongers of Billingsgate
Frank sweeps up the parsley at the end of the service
The cobbled hill leading down from the church to the old Billingsgate Market
Frank David with the “bobbin” first worn by his grandfather Jim David at Billingsgate in the 1890s
Photographs copyright © Ashley Jordan Gordon
You may also like to read about
The Last Fish Porters of Billingsgate Market
Spitalfields & Whitechapel In Old Photographs
I am giving an illustrated lecture of Spitalfields & Whitechapel in Old Photographs on Thursday 16th October at 7pm at the Hanbury Hall in Hanbury St, E1 6QR.
Drawing upon more than 45,000 images that I have collected over the past sixteen years here on Spitalfields Life, I will be showing a selection of images spanning the past hundred and fifty years that reveal the changing urban landscape and life of Spitalfields & Whitechapel, including work by the Society for Photographing the Relics of Old London, London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, Charles Chusseau-Flaviens, John Thompson, Jack London, Horace Warner, C A Mathew, David Bailey, John Claridge, Philip Marriage, Colin O’Brien, Mark Jackson & Huw Davies, Marketa Luskacova, Ron McCormick, Clive Murphy, Suresh Singh, David Hoffman, Phil Maxwell, Fran May, Raju Vaidyanathan and more.
Society for Photographing the Relics of Old London
London & Middlesex Archaeological Society
Charles Chusseau-Flaviens
Jack London
Horace Warner
C A Mathew
John Claridge
Dan Cruickshank
Geoff Perrior
Tony Hall
Tex Ajetunmobi
David Truzzi-Franconi
Dragan Novaković
Homer Sykes
Val Perrin
Shloimy Alman
Mark Jackson & Huw Davies
Malcom Tremain
Ron McCormick
Clive Murphy
Colin O’Brien
Syd Shelton
David Hoffman
Tony Bock
Dennis Anthony
Philip Marriage
Phil Maxwell
Suresh Singh
Marketa Luskacova
Raju Vaidyanathan
Alan Dein
Fran May
Nick Strangelove
Sarah Ainslie
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
Lesley Lewis, The French House
CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER ‘JOURNAL OF A MAN UNKNOWN’
‘It is a sort of family, a very strange family’
When you walk into the French House in Dean St, you enter a magical realm of possibility where you discover you are welcome and where you might meet almost anyone. It is the last place I can think of where the spirit of old Soho lingers and where you feel you are at the heart of London. It is a public place and yet people behave as if they were in private, a place where – just by walking in the door – you become accepted into a community.
Since 1891 when it opened, there have only been three publicans at the French House. In 1989, Lesley Lewis took over when Gaston Berlemont passed into legend. Today, Lesley presides with a regal hauteur worthy of Catherine Deneuve, a shrewd humour worthy of Marie Lloyd and a generosity of spirit worthy of Mistress Quickly.
On the road to the French house, Lesley performed with a python in cabaret before graduating to managing a strip club in Old Compton St in 1979, where admission cost 50p and senior customers brought sandwiches to stay all day. As it turned out, these formative experiences proved the ideal qualifications when destiny called.
Lesley tells how Gaston Berlemont’s family took over the pub from the first landlord, a German by the name of Schimdt, whose wife returned – after he had left the country at the outbreak of WWI – to sign over the lease on September 12th, 1914. Gaston spent his whole life at the French House and, on his return from WWII, his father said,”Enough of that. You’re behind the bar, I’m off.”
It was a brawl in the twenties between French sailors smashing pint glasses over each other’s heads that led to the house policy of only serving half pints of beer, which continues to this day with the annual exception of April 1st.
During the last war, the pub – known as the York Minister – became a centre for French ex-patriates in London, serving wine which was a rare commodity then. Gaston’s daughter Giselle recalls Errol Flynn and Orson Welles tasting wine in the cellar at this time, and in June 1940 General De Gaulle wrote his famous speech in the bar -“La France a perdu une bataille. Mais la France n’a pas perdu la guerre!” After the war, the nickname of ‘The French House’ stuck and, in 1984, the name was officially changed.
With such illustrious predecessors, it was a great delight and privilege to sit down with Lesley in a quiet corner of the bar and hear her story in her own words over a glass of Ricard.
“I was General Manager at Peppermint Park, a restaurant and cocktail bar in Upper St Martin’s Lane, and when they sold the company I was offered redundancy or a pub. So I took the pub. It was the George & Dragon in Clerkenwell, a marvellous old pub. I had never poured a pint in my life, but some of my staff came with me because we were all made redundant, and that was the start of loving the pub business.
It took me a while to get into the swing of things and I learnt a good few lessons. We had no idea what we were doing but the customers helped us. After the first week, we were called together by some of the regulars and they said, ‘Lesley, this is fine. We don’t mind you looking after our pub for us.’ That is the truth of pubs, it is not my pub it is the customers’ pub – because without them, we are absolutely nothing.
Slowly, we learnt to pull pints and amuse the customers. We were next door to the school of journalism so we had a lot of students, but most of our customers were the old time, edge-of-the-East-End, Clerkenwell people. They were characters – all been pretty much wiped out, it is something quite different now.
I lived above the George & Dragon and I live upstairs here, it is a very difficult job to do without living on the premises because you are pretty much on for seven days a week. After about five years in Clerkenwell, they offered me a ‘wine bar,’ and this was the wine bar! I knew the French House already and I had always loved it, and I have been here thirty years.
It was always full of wonderful characters – it still is, but they are different kinds of characters today – writers, painters and bohemians. Gaston was the landlord then and it was condemned when he retired in 1989, which I did not discover until I went to get the licence and I was given three months to sort it out. The place had been left to rack and ruin, which I think is probably why Gaston wanted to retire. He was facing a huge bill, instead I got the huge bill but it was worth it.
We had to rebuild it in a way that people would not notice, so we were building through the night. It was the most loved place in the world and I had this feeling I was going to destroy it but the red linoleum on the bar top had to go. It is British oak to go with the rest of the interior and it cost a fortune. Then I had to bash it up a bit so it looked in tune with the whole pub. The windows had not opened since the sixties but we fixed that. There was this awful seating along the window and you burnt your ankles on the heating which was underneath, so we got rid of that and bar stools came in. This pub has evolved.
I have stayed thirty years at the French House because I love it, this is what I do. It is a sort of family, a very strange family. Most of my staff have been with me a very long time and we are very close. Eighty per cent of my customers are regulars and we are all close to each other. We help each other through everything. To be honest, I do not know what I would do without it.
A big city can be a lonely horrible place sometimes and if there is a place where you can go for a bit of comfort and conversation. It is not just about drinking, it is about going to have a chat with somebody, and feel safe in an environment that is yours – where you are not threatened in any way, as you are in a lot of clubs. It is for all ages. Our eldest customer is Norman who is ninety-two but he does not come in very often and our youngest is a year and two months, Georgie’s little boy who has been coming in here since he was conceived.
For me, it all about the people who have been in here over the years – like Francis Bacon, Dylan Thomas, Dan Farson and Lucian Freud. I think at some point just about everybody who is anybody has put a foot over the threshold. They are all still here in a funny kind of way. Their essence is here.
I think it is really important that we keep our pubs. You notice how – particularly in Soho – they are disappearing all the time. It is even more important in the country villages where, if the pub goes, there is nothing. People need to have somewhere to go. It is a very British thing, a pub.”
Portraits copyright © Sarah Ainslie
The French House, 49 Dean Street, Soho, London, W1D 5BG
You may also like to read about
Journal Of a Man Unknown By Gillian Tindall
It is with a heart full of emotion that I write to you today. I have two announcements. The first piece of news I have to impart is that my good friend the historian Gillian Tindall died on Wednesday aged eighty-seven. The second disclosure is that Gillian came to see me in February and asked me to publish her final work, Journal of a Man Unknown, which comes out on 6th November.
When Gillian and I met for a drink in the Great Eastern Hotel at Liverpool St Station on that cold night early in the year, she revealed she was terminally ill and that she had written a novel which she would like me to publish. Gillian was a talented writer, celebrated both for the quality of her writing and scrupulousness of her research. She had a distinguished record of more than sixty years publishing books and was a contributing writer to Spitalfields Life. So, of course, I said yes.
I was fascinated that, culminating her career as a historian, Gillian had chosen to write a piece of fiction as her final statement. In an astonishing feat of literary imagination, she projects herself back onto one of her forebears to conjure a compelling vision of seventeenth century England.
Journal of a Man Unknown is an eloquent first person narrative. The protagonist is a Huguenot iron worker, an occupation that leads him from the Sussex Weald to the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, and beyond to the North Country. While in London, he lives above a coffee house in Brick Lane and the book conjures a vivid evocation of Spitalfields at the time of the Huguenots.
Gillian’s novel serves as a personal manifesto expressing her belief in the true nature of history as composed of the lives of working people, those who pass through life not leaving a trace, except in the hearts of those into whose lives they have been cast. It is a sentiment with which I am fully in sympathy and makes Journal of a Man Unknown a poignant and heartfelt final statement.
All summer, as Gillian’s health declined, I worked with designer David Pearson to prepare a beautiful edition of her novel in the hope and expectation that she would be here to see it published. But it was not to be. My last contact with Gillian was when she approved David’s splendid cover design above and selected this blue and yellow version from the different options that David proposed.
It was a shock to learn of Gillian’s death this week just as her book was at the printers, but on reflection I think there is also a certain poetry in the notion of an author passing from this world knowing that her final work is to be published within weeks. In this sense, we never truly lose writers because they stay with us through their books.
We will be announcing a book launch presently, but in the meantime you can preorder a copy of Journal of a Man Unknown which we will send out at the end of this month.
CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER ‘JOURNAL OF A MAN UNKNOWN’
CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER ‘JOURNAL OF A MAN UNKNOWN’
On Publication Day For Tessa Hunkin’s Hackney Mosaic Project
Tessa Hunkin with fans at the book launch
At last, after five years of work, Tessa Hunkin’s Hackney Mosaic Project is published today, thanks to the generosity of you, the readers of Spitalfields Life.
Last Saturday, hundreds converged on the pavilion in the middle of the park where the mosaic workshop has its home. It was a golden autumn day to view the magnificent playground shelter mosaic and the wall of portraits of the hounds of Hackney Downs.
I was delighted to welcome many of you in person while Tessa spent the afternoon besieged behind the author’s table signing books and we served homemade cakes and cordial by Company Drinks to our honoured guests.
At the rear of the pavilion were two exhibitions, of the sample panels for each of the project’s major works and of personal mosaics created by members of the project which were for sale. In the midst of all this, the volunteers sat at work piecing the next masterpieces together, while our guests crowded to watch this compelling demonstration of the mosaic artists’ skills.
Click here to order and get a free copy of ‘A Hoxton Childhood’
Thank you to the following readers of Spitalfields Life who made publication possible.
Carla Adamek, Rose Ades, Ben Adler, Andrew John Ainslie, Sarah Ainslie, Teresa Ainslie, Liz Aitken, Janet Ajao, Sophie Alderson, Hannah Alejandro, Karen Alexander, Kate Amis, Chris Anderson, Deborah Andrews, Paul Leonard Anness, Susan Arnott, Elizabeth Aumeer, Chrystabel Austin, Michael Babcock, Joan Bailey, Gaynor Baldwin, Madeleine Ball, Graham Barker, Rosie Barker, CM Barlow, Gillian Baron, Nikki Barton, Roxy Beaujolais, Stephen Beckett-Doyle, B Beech, Karen Beesley, Julie Begum, Molly Behagg, Jane Berry, Robin Blench, Hilary Blackstock, Jude Bloomfield, bookartbookshop, Jenni Bowley, Richard Bowley, Lindsay Bown, Iain Boyd, Patricia Boyko, Bridget Bradshaw, Keith Brennan, Jan Brewerton, Margaret Brickell, Richenda Bridge, Christopher Brown, Michael Jake Brown, Henry Browne, James Buchan, Claire Burkhalter, Steven Caldwell, Peter J. Cameron, Catherine Campbell, Ruth Campbell, Sarah Campbell, Jenny Lee Carlin, Fiona Carpenter, Helen Carpenter, Jane Carroll, Patricia Carroll, Lynne Casey, Julia Chalkley, Margaret Chamberlain, Lorna Chambers, Sheree Charalampous, Naman Chaudhary, Linda Chauncey, Janet Cheffings, Rebecca Chester, Yvonne Cheyney, Colin Childerley, Christine Chinnery, John Clark, Stephen Clarke, Neville Clipsham, Shirley Collier, Wendy Cook, Julie Cooke, JA Cooper, Amie Corry, Maya Corry, Simon Costin, Valerie Cottle, Paul Couchman, Graham Crane, Eleanor Crow, John Curno, Hilary Cuthbertson, Mary Dalton, Rosie Dastgir, Claire Davenport, Andrea Davidson, Andrew Dawson, Lydia Deane, Melissa Delano, Victoria Diggle, Caytherine Howard-Dobson, Maura Dooley, Denny Dormer, Lesley Doyal, Anthony Edwards, Claire Edwards, Josephine Eglin, Robin Ellams, Marion Elliot, Janet Ellis, Richard Ellis, Tom Empson, Debrah Esdale, Sian Evans, Diana Fawcett, Andrea Feldman, Alison Felstead, Gillian Figures, Susan Fine, Deborah Finkler, Lynda Finn, Doreen Fletcher, Linda Florio, Simon Foley, Sue Grayson Ford, Lisa Forkas, David Fox, Maggie Fox, Nancy Franklin, Susie Freedman, Vivian French, Sue Froggitt, John Furlong, Chris Gad, Perrine Gasqui, Eveta Gilkes, John Gillman, Gillygrannyruth, Charles Gledhill, Dorothy Twining Globus, Susanna Delia Gluck, Deby Goldsmith, Raymond Golland, David Goold, Michael Gornall, Alexander Graham, Linda Granfield, Sophie Green, Judy Greenway, Katherine Grier, Oona Grimes, Teresa Grimes, Anne Groves, Mary Grunfeld, Polly Grylls, Jenny Guest, Melanie Hamill, Mark Hamsher, Catherine Harris, Julia Harrison, Gordon Harrison, Patricia Harrison, Peter Harrison, Kathryn Hatsell, Patricia Haupt, Claire Hayward, David Heath, Lesley Hemming, Susan Henry, Susanna Heron, Lubaina Himid, Carolyn Hirst, Angela Hobsbaum, Clive Hocker, Suzanne Hodgart, Tony Hollington, Jaye Hopkins, Stephanie Horsford, Araminta Huitson, Richard Humm, Timothy Hunkin, Peter Hunt, Jessica Hunter, Tom Hunter, Brian Hurwitz, Joan Isaac, Ulf Jacobson, Jane James, Simon Jamieson, Daniel Jenkins, Pauline Jobson, Annie Johns, Patricia Johnson, Philip Johnson, Barbara R Jones, Andrew Jones, Vivienne Jones, Maria Jordan, Tracy Josephs, Ron Joyce, Matthew Kay, Hilda Kean, Michael Keating, Patricia Kelly, Ron Kelterborn, Marianna Kennedy, Sheila Kennedy, Sara Kermond, Colette Khan, Mark King, Hylary Kingham, Jennifer Kingman, Nicola Kingston, Anu Kumar, Deidre Lacey, Katie Lambe, Judith Lancet, L Langmead, Pauline Langmead, Carol Larkin, Oliver Lazarus, Sarah Le May, Marie Lenclos, Colin Lennon, David Lester, Sarah Lewington, Howard Lewis, Patricia Lewis, Martin Ling, Julia Little, Susan Long, Pauline Lord, Patrick Lowe, Sarah Ludford, Lynn MacKay, Gareth Maeer, Tim Mainstone, Stephen Makepeace, Anne Mannion, Julie Mapstone, Fiona Marlow, Elizabeth Marshall, Anabel Marsh, Hellen Martin, Stephanie Mascis, Rachel Matthews, Ava Mayer, Phil Mayer, Francis Mayhew, Jo Mazelis, Jock McFadyen & Susie Honeyman, Melanie McGrath, Fiona McQuarrie, Jill Mead, Julia Meadows, Helen Menezes, Susan Mepham, Deborah Merrett, Russell A Metz, Carolyn Meunier, Jennifer Michael, Dusan Mihajlovic, Helen Miles, Susan Miles, Rosalind Mills, Dianne Mitchell, Janet Mohler, Iain Monaghan, Andrew Monk, Annie Moreton, Matilda Moreton, Isabel Morris, Zoë Mulcare, Angus Murray, Caroline Murray, Terry Musk, Janet Mutch, Margaret Nairne, Jennifer Newbold, Ros Niblett, Geoff Nichols, Bernadette Nolan, Mary Norden, Gillian Norgan, Anthony Norman, Francis Oakley, David O’Brien Jr, Gilbert O’Brien, Jan O’Brien, Marilyn O’Brien, Sharon O’Connor, Diane Olson-Baskin, Anne Orsi, Effie Paleologou, Clarissa Palmer, Vivienne Palmer, Enrico Panizzo, Nick Parfitt, Hannah Parham, Peter Parker, Matt Parkes, Dhru Patel, Alice Pattullo, Joyce Ellen Pavelko, Caroline Payne, ME Percival, Pamela Percy, Lynne Perrella, Fiona Pettitt, Andrea Petochi, JM Pettiward, Prerana Phadnis, Elizabeth Phillips, Dame Siân Phillips, Caroline Pick, Stoodley Pike, Alison Pilkington, Kate Pocock, Kay Porter, Mary Porter, Molly Porter, Jeffrey Ian Press, Elizabeth Prochaska, Sir Jonathan Pryce, Mary Purcell, Amelia Rapp, Alice Rawsthorn, Gill Reidy, Edward Rekkers, Del Rey, Ruth Richardson, John Ricketts, Helen Rimell, Deb Rindl, Vivienne Ritchie, Gaby Robertshaw, Gerard Robinson, Paul Rogers, Maria Rogers, Corvin Roman, Steve Ruggi & Gilda Williams, Madeleine Ruggi, Penny Russell, Timothy Sayer, Julia Scaping, Huibert Schijf, Karen Bliersbach-Schmalowsky, Natalie Schofield, Margarita Schwartzel, Elizabeth Scott, Kate Scott, Mary Scott, Janet Sharples, Suzanne Shelton, Silvervanwoman, Penelope Simpson, Ellen R Sippel, Mick Skipworth, Nigel Slater, Tony Sleep, Angela Smith, Hilary J Smith, Mary Smith, Roderick Smith, Rachel Darnley-Smith, Sir Charles Saumarez Smith, Valerie Solly, A Sparks, Alexandra Spray, Barnaby Spurrier, Amanda Stanbrook, Gail Stevens, Lawrence P Stevenson, Lexi Stones, Harriet Storey, Lowri Story, Paul Strickland, Andy Stroman, Graham Styles, Jill Sullivan, Christine Swan, Steve Szilagyi, Amanda Talsma-Williams, Catherine Thomas, Rupert Thomas, Penelope Thompson, Sophie Thompson, Victoria Thorne, Molly Thoron-Duran, G Timlin, Toby Titter, Dominic Townsend, Jane Trethewey, David Trotter, Penny Tunbridge, Olivia Horsfall Turner, Cathy Unwin, Hugh Valentine, Henrietta Varley, Sarah Vaughan, Christina Vogt, Rowan Vyvan, E Walker, Simon Walker, Elizabeth Wallett, Joyce Wallis, Karen Walton, Holly Warburton, Ilse Warnecke, Arabella Warner, Jonty Wareing, William J Warren, CCC Waspie, Paul James Watanabe-Lamy, Madeleine Weaver, Nicky Webb, Lianne Weidmann, Patricia Wenz, Karen Wesley, Michael Westley, Paula Wharram, Nagele Whiteacre, Ursula Whitbread, James White, Carol Whitman, Robin Whitney, Sharon Willard, Margaret Willes, Hilary Willgoss, Lee Williams, Lunita Williams, Jane Wilson, Jill Wilson, Penny Wilson, Mary Winch, Sarah Winman, Jenny Wiseman, Sara Withers, Juliet Wood, Julian Woodford, Charles Wynne-Evans, James Yates, Patricia Zeitlin, Michael Zilkha and many others who choose to be anonymous.
Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I went along to meet Tessa Hunkin at Hackney Mosaic Project‘s workshop in the pavilion on Hackney Downs. Sarah photographed the mosaic makers at work while Tessa explained to me how it all came about.
Janice Desler and Jamie Johnson at work
The Gentle Author How did you start making mosaics?
Tessa Hunkin I was working as an architect but I was frustrated because I was always telling people to do things that I did not know how to do myself. I wanted to learn how to do something well so that I could design things that were elegant in terms of how they were made. I also wanted to work with colour because architecture is rather a colourless endeavour.
Coincidentally, a friend, Emma Biggs, had seen a programme about the Italian community in London. She had been inspired by film of the old Italian mosaicists at work and began making mosaics in her spare room. So I went and joined her and we worked together for fifteen years. We set up a company called Mosaic Workshop and acquired a workshop on the Holloway Road.
The Gentle Author What kind of work were you making?
Tessa Hunkin It was fairly hideous because we did not know what we were doing. We did doorsteps for shops and so many toilets and bathrooms, miles of Roman borders, rope borders and rolling waves that made us cry with boredom. But we were developing our skills and we began to get more interesting jobs and bigger canvases to play with.
The Gentle Author How did you start creating your own designs?
Tessa Hunkin I had begun developing my own designs alongside commissions from designers. Quite a lot were for rich people who were opinionated or had interior designers, so there were a lot of ‘cooks’ and often designs got compromised.
My colleague Emma pointed out that in public or community art you get to do the design and that might be more liberating creatively. Unfortunately, we only started thinking like this after 2008 when much of the community funding had dried up thanks to the government’s policy of austerity.
There was a reprieve for the London Olympics when there was a bit more money around. So that was our opportunity to try this path. Partly it was the desire to have more design freedom but also I wanted to work with people who might enjoy making mosaics, and who might benefit from and appreciate the creative process in the way that I did.
I was attracted by the idea that you might be able to find volunteers who were not in it for money, but who who loved the medium and enjoyed the process in the way I did. Going into community art was a way of combining all these aspirations.
The Gentle Author Where did it begin?
Tessa Hunkin I had an idea. I found this book of Tunisian mosaics and it was a light bulb moment, looking at these mosaics which depicted everyday life in Roman North Africa.
The book explained how archaeologists had learnt so much about the way the Romans lived and the tools they used. The mosaics were full of life and variety, yet they hung together in a very beautiful and satisfying way.
I thought, ‘Yes, this would work really well as a group project – everybody could contribute a little bit – and also for the Olympics, it could record how we lived in 2012.’
When all the digital data and Google have fizzled out, the mosaic will still be there to show people using mobile phones and iPods. In fact, the mobile phones in the mosaic are already out of date – they have little aerials on them – so it is already fulfilling its purpose.
The Gentle Author Where did you do this?
Tessa Hunkin Hackney were looking for a project for people in recovery from addiction and they were attracted this idea because it was uncontroversial. I spent a lot of time walking around Hackney, which has more parks than any other London borough. I visited them all, photographing suitable walls, but the council did not want mosaics on any of those. Instead, they found a hidden little corner in Shepherdess Walk, off the City Road, and that was the first.
The Gentle Author How did you find it when you began to work with non-professionals? Did you have any experience as a teacher or therapist?
Tessa Hunkin I had done some work at a mental health project. I became involved because Mosaic Workshop, as well as making mosaics, ran a shop selling mosaic materials.
People from the Westminster mental health project came along as customers and that was how I met Susie Balazs who was a wonderful teacher. She was very friendly and her group were always so excited coming to her mosaic workshop and have a go. They possessed a kind of enthusiasm that I saw was invaluable and I wanted to harness that too.
So I only had a little bit of experience and I was nervous about the addiction angle because it was not something I had come across before. In fact, there is a lot of overlap between mental health problems and addiction which can often originate from self-medication. It was a steep learning curve for me, working out how to explain things clearly to beginners and finding tasks that would be pleasurable rather than painful.
One of the elements that came in useful were the Roman borders. These were the very things that had driven us mad when we were doing miles of them for commercial projects but I discovered they work well as learning exercises for beginners. Based closely on the Roman models, they comprise single units endlessly repeated, flowing easily from one to the next.
I had found a way of getting people started and I could see it was working. People liked the amount of concentration that it required even to follow quite a simple pattern but it engaged them sufficiently that they stopped thinking about all the other things that might be preoccupying them. At the end of the session they did not want to leave. That was incredibly satisfying.
To begin with, I divided up the sessions – one for the local community and another for the recovering addicts. But my mental health clients from Westminster also wanted to come and join. For a while, they all had separate sessions.
But they were all so keen, they wanted to come as often as they could. So I gave up the divisions and let everybody could come to everything. Eventually, we had children running around, recovering addicts, some not-so-recovered people with quite serious mental health problems and people who lived close by, all sitting together making mosaics. It seemed to work out. They finished the mosaics much more quickly than I was anticipating and we have never stopped since.
The Gentle Author I know it has been a great source of inspiration to you, working in this way, and I wanted to know what these people brought to the work. How have you created structures that allow individual input?
Tessa Hunkin That was another thing I learned from the Romans, through comparing Roman mosaics with nineteenth century mosaics. Those recent mosaics are quite formulaic. They have high quality craftsmanship but they are slightly dead, whereas the Roman ones have much more life to them. They are more irregular, partly because they were using natural materials – stone and things which cut irregularly – but also, because they had a variety of abilities at work. The character of the makers is preserved in mosaic.
The Gentle Author What do you think the people involved take away from it? How is it therapeutic for them?
Tessa Hunkin It gives people a holiday from their head. It is a simple task that requires concentration and produces something at the end, so it is never time wasted because you can see where your time has gone.
I believe this is fundamental. Once, there were lots of jobs that involved working with your hands but most of those no longer exist in our post-industrial world and for some I think this is an unacknowledged loss.
If you have never try working with your hands you do not know the pleasure and the benefit it can be. It is often dismissed as women’s work – embroidery and knitting and crochet and all those fantastic things – but they are as fundamental as sport.
The Gentle Author Has your approach to design changed through all this?
Tessa Hunkin The gift is that when a commission comes along, now I have all these lovely people who help me create it. Every time I start a design, I think about how to make it as simple and elegant as possible so it is pleasurable to make. I want it to be both beautiful to look at, so the wider community benefits from it too, and I love
creating mosaics for public spaces because I want as many people to see them as possible. If people have enjoyed making them I think that comes out in the work. If they are beautiful to look at as well as pleasurable to make, then that is a win-win.
The Gentle Author I have seen community mosaic projects that are of social value but sometimes the aesthetic is quite random. Yet your work also has this superlative aesthetic quality which makes it outstanding. How you have you reconciled this, raising the bar with all the participants?
Tessa Hunkin They help me willingly and amazingly, but they also get the opportunity to do their own things. That element was not there at the beginning of the project. I have realised that it was a bit much expecting them only to do my bidding, so they alternate between working on commissions where they obey my rules and doing their own projects. I hope they learn from the way I configured mosaics and can translate that knowledge back to their own work.
When you have experience of a technique, you can work out how to achieve strong effects in a way that appears effortless and simple. The Romans understood this and we follow their system, it is a tradition as much as it is my bidding.
The Gentle Author Are you speaking for that tradition?
Tessa Hunkin I am speaking for the tradition and I am also channelling the tradition. Hackney Mosaic Project is a group, a social group, which is particularly important for people in recovery from addiction who often lose their friends. They can become very isolated so this is a way of bringing people together and giving them a social world. The best mosaic of all is the combination of these widely different people who come together and, for a time, form a cohesive and mutually-supportive group. For some, they have replaced one addiction with an addiction to mosaic.
The Gentle Author I am always been touched by the degree of emotional ownership the makers have of the work and their sense of pride.
Tessa Hunkin In our public work, we try to produce something that people genuinely admire. We have now won a real audience and acquired a reputation, and we are very proud of the work we have done, which helps everyone’s self-esteem.
Rosalind Reeder
Janice Desler
Ken Edwards and Katy Dixon
Gabi Liers
Deb Rindl
Katy Dixon
Jamie Johnson
Rosalind Reeder and Tessa Hunkin
Mary Helena
Rosalind Reeder
Janice Desler and Jamie Johnson
Linda Hood
Tessa Hunkin
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
You may also like to take a look at
