Ainsworth Broughton, Upholsterer
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My interview with master upholsterer Ainsworth Donovan Broughton of 14 Calvert Avenue (commonly known as Mike) was perforce a swift one because he had three sofas, four chairs, a day bed and a Chesterfield to upholster before the end of this week. Although I arrived at the beginning of the working day, Ainsworth had been in since seven, stealing a march on time, and, as you can see from the picture, he had already made swift work of the day bed. Once I arrived, he sat down on his work bench, crossed his arms and displaying his good-humoured accommodating smile, declared, “Right, let’s get this done!” – with the same workmanlike sense of purpose that he would approach a challenging piece of upholstery.
Not so long ago, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green were the home of a thriving furniture industry that has almost entirely disappeared now. While there are people in the neighbourhood who may call themselves upholsterers these days, Ainsworth is the only one that has done the full apprenticeship in traditional upholstery and qualified under the Association of Master Upholsterers. More than this, Ainsworth is the living connection to the time when furniture-making flourished here. Although he is not self-conscious about it, he carries that history on his shoulders, which enables him to carry it lightly – because as the factories closed down and the other traditional upholsterers retired, Ainsworth simply carried on resolutely upholstering chairs and making an honest living at it while the world, and the East End, transformed around him. It was the natural thing for him to do, and it is this ease with his work, and commitment to his craft which makes Ainsworth such a dignified figure today.
“I specialise in traditional upholstery, although I can do whatever people bring along. Traditional upholstery is the old way of doing it, with stuffing and stitching and horsehair. I love it. The modern stuff is just foam! When I found traditional upholstery, I knew I had found my vocation in life. At the London College of Furniture, they banned me from the workshop because I used to stay behind after hours, always stuffing and stitching. Traditional upholstery is just quality – you know it will last thirty years or more. Working out from a frame how to do everything, that’s the joy of it. I’ve always liked to build something up, take it from frame to finished job and see people appreciate my work. There’s pieces of mine I have done for interior designers at Liberty, Sketch and Manolo Blahnik but the people there don’t know my name.
At fifteen, I did a day release from school at the London College of Furniture, and the head of the department saw what I was doing and said, ‘You could be good at this.’ After college, I was apprenticed to furniture makers A&E Chapman of Crouch End for five years and then I had the opportunity to stay on for another couple of years and be an ‘improver’ – before that you were just prepping. One day they took me into the office and said, ‘We’re going to let you loose,’ and it didn’t take much longer before I was able to work at the bench, but I always wanted to be self-employed. So in 1981, I took a studio in the Cleve Workshops in Boundary St and I used to do a day’s work before coming here to do a few ‘copper jobs’ – on the side.
Then one day I took a chance and left, and for six months I had hardly any work but slowly it picked up. I had one customer and then another and it continued like that. Back in the day, every shop in Shoreditch was an upholsterer but they’ve all gone now. In 1984, when the Cleve Workshops were sold, I managed to get one of the derelict shops in Calvert Avenue. The whole area was completely desolate then, there wasn’t anybody living here, but it enabled me to have a workshop because it was cheap. I never took my shutters down until seven years ago, because there was no passing trade, but recently it’s been different, there’s people here who are into traditional upholstery and so I get work locally now.”
Ainsworth does not even have a sign outside his shop, yet customers come and go all the time. In the window you simply see a photocopy of his certificate presented to the most outstanding student at the London College of Furniture in 1976/77. Looking through the metal grille into the crowded workshop where Ainsworth works from seven until seven each day, you see a high shelf up above where bare frames of furniture await his attention, while the walls are lined with racks of tools, cloth swatches and innumerable calculations pencilled directly onto the plaster, and the lino tiles from the shop that Ainsworth superseded in 1984 still cover the floor. In front of the window is a shelf to display his finished handiwork – only Ainsworth is so inundated that it is always piled with incoming work. “I could do even more, if I had an assistant – but I never want to employ anyone.”, he said, shrugging his shoulders dispassionately and revealing the enviable self-reliance that is the source of his tranquil manner.
I did not want to take any more of his working day. So once he was assured that I was satisfied with his interview, I asked Ainsworth if he thought he would finish the three sofas, four chairs, day bed and Chesterfield this week. “We’ll give it a go!” he declared with a smirk as he stood up from the work bench with energy rising, eager to set to work again. Even if anyone that has done a course can claim to be an upholsterer nowadays, it seems that there are plenty who recognise that the noble Ainsworth Broughton is the genuine article – an artist whose technique is stitching and medium is horsehair, practicing a skill acquired through an apprenticeship of five years, with an expertise honed over thirty years, and executed with a satisfaction and delight that is his alone.
Ainsworth in 1973, when he first started at London College of Furniture.
Ainsworth at work on his graduation piece, London College of Furniture, 1976.
Ainsworth Broughton, Master Upholsterer of Calvert Avenue, commonly known as Mike.
Ainsworth’s most outstanding student award from 1977
At Kelmscott House, Hammersmith
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I have walked past William Morris’ former house on the river bank in Hammersmith many times and always wondered what it was like inside but, since it is now a private dwelling, I never expected to visit. However, the residents kindly open their doors to members of the William Morris Society once every two years and thus I was permitted the privilege of joining the tour.
William Morris was forty-three years old when he came to live here. It was to be his last house in a succession that began with his childhood home in Walthamstow and included the Red House in Bexleyheath, designed for him and Jane as their marital home by Philip Webb, and the sixteenth century Kelmscott Manor by the Thames in Lechlade. The rural idyll which William Morris hoped for at Kelmscott Manor had been sullied by the overbearing presence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti whose obsession with Jane Morris had led him to take up permanent residence.
“If you could be content to live no nearer London than that, I cannot help thinking we should do very well there and certainly the open river and the garden at the back are a great advantage,” William wrote tactfully to Jane in February 1877. “If the matter lay with me only, I should be setting about taking the house, for already I have become conscious of the difficulty of getting anything decent. As to such localities as Knightsbridge or Kensington Sq, they are quite beyond our means.”
Built in the seventeen-eighties, the house was known as The Retreat and had once been the home of Sir Francis Ronalds, inventor of the electric telegraph, who had filled the long garden, which stretched all the way back to King St then, with buried cables as part of his experiments. When William Morris came here and renamed it Kelmscott House, it had been the home of the novelist George MacDonald for a decade. However – somewhat ominously for Morris – they chose to leave since MacDonald believed that the proximity to the polluted river was responsible for his family’s ill-health. In those days, the riverfront at Hammersmith was heavily industrialised with factories and wharfs.
I realised that, in my imagination, I felt I had already visited Kelmscott House. Long ago, when I read Morris’ novel News From Nowhere, I was seduced by his vision of a homespun Utopia that had turned its back on industrialism. In my memory, as if in the moonlight of a dream, I joined the characters as they departed Kelmscott House and undertook the journey up the Thames from Hammersmith to Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire, travelling a hundred years into the future.
When I paid my visit to Kelmscott House, there were compelling details which evoked that faraway world, even if time and change had wiped away almost all of the evidence of Morris’ occupation of the house. “Let us hope that we shall all grow younger there,” he wrote to Jane with forced optimism in October 1878, just before they moved in.
Walking through the narrow passage beside The Dove, you discover the wide expanse of the Thames on the left and Kelmscott House rising up on your right, presenting an implacable frontage to the river. You enter through the area stairs on the left of the house, leading down to the kitchen, and immediately you notice a wall of original trellis wallpaper, designed by Morris with birds drawn by Philip Webb. If no-one told you, you would assume it was a recent reprint since these papers remain in production today. The low-ceilinged basement rooms are now the headquarters of the William Morris Society, where you may admire his Albion Press before climbing stairs again into the former coach house. This long narrow room was employed by Morris as a workshop for knotting carpets, also lectures and meetings of the Hammersmith Socialist League were held here. During his final years at Kelmscott, Morris became increasingly involved with politics and the Socialist cause.
The garden no longer stretches to King St, just as far as M4, yet it is impressively generous for a London garden, with well-kept herbaceous borders and a wide lawn. Most fascinating to me, though, was the strawberry patch – since William Morris’ Strawberry Thief is one of his most celebrated textile designs, inspired by his experiences at Kelmscott Manor where the thrushes raided his soft fruit.
Approaching the house from the rear, it presents quite a different aspect than from the front, with assymetric projections and a bowed turret. The high-ceilinged dining room at the back was especially offensive to Morris with its Adam detailing and Venetian window. This seems a curious prejudice to the modern sensibility. Perhaps our equivalent might be those eighties post-modern buildings which have not aged well. Fortunately, Morris suspended a vast sixteenth century Islamic carpet across one wall and part of the ceiling, drawing the eye from the Georgian elements which he found so hideous.
Emery Walker photographed the interiors, capturing Morris’ personal sense of interior design, employing lush textiles and extravagant antiques, mixed with furniture painted by Philip Webb and fine oriental ceramics. Architecturally, the most impressive space is the first floor drawing room which spans the width of the house, created by George MacDonald by knocking two bedrooms into one. In this south-facing room, the views over Chiswick Reach are breathtaking. Morris lined it with a rich, bluish tapestry of birds in foliage that he designed for this location. A huge settle painted with sunflowers by Philip Webb once sat beside the fireplace, lined with blue and white tiles manufactured by Morris & Co and still in situ.
In 1881, seeing children from the nearby slum known as Little Wapping swinging on his garden gate, Morris recognised, “It was my good luck only of being born respectable and rich, that has put me on this side of the window among delightful books and lovely works of art, and not on the other side, in the empty street, the drink-steeped liquor shops, the foul and degraded lodgings.”
Overlooking the garden at the back was Jane Morris’ room, somewhat detached from the rest of the house, granting her the independence she required as she withdrew from her marriage during the years at Hammersmith. The two front rooms on the ground floor, overlooking the river, comprised William Morris’ workroom and bedroom. It was in the workroom to the left of the front door that he supervised the creation of the Kelmscott Press, publishing fifty-two titles in five years. In his bedroom to the right, he installed a loom to undertake tapestry through the long hours of the night when he could not sleep. Here he died from tuberculosis on 3rd October 1896, aged just sixty-two, nursed by Emery Walker as his breath failed him. His last words were, “I want to get mumbo jumbo out of the world.”
I walked back along King St to the tube, past the Lyric Sq Market where William Morris once spoke. I thought about him taking the District Line back and forth to visit East London for public speaking – and I decided I should trace his footsteps in the East End next.
Basement stairs with original Morris ‘Trellis’ wallpaper
William Morris’ design for ‘Trellis’ wallpaper with birds drawn by Philip Webb
William Morris’ Albion Press
Hammersmith Socialist League gathering on the back lawn at Kelmscott House, 1885
William Morris’ workroom from which he ran the Kelmscott Press, with stairs leading up to the coach house where Hammersmith Socialist League meetings were held (Photograph by Emery Walker)
Strawberry patch in the garden at Kelmscott
William Morris’ ‘Strawberry Thief’ design
Sixteenth century Islamic carpet displayed by Morris in the dining room at Kelmscott (Photograph by Emery Walker)
‘William Morris’ rose blooms at Kelmscott
The drawing room at Kelmscott (Photograph by Emery Walker)
Tapestry designed for the drawing room at Kelmscott
The drawing room at Kelmscott (Photograph by Emery Walker)
William Morris spoke here – Lyric Sq Market, Hammersmith
Archive photographs courtesy William Morris Society
The lower floor and coach house of Kelmscott House are open on Thursday and Saturday afternoons. Visit the William Morris Society website for further details
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Thomas Bewick’s Dogs
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I consulted my copy of Thomas Bewick’s General History of Quadrupeds 1824 that I found in the Spitalfields Market recently to see what breeds were familiar two hundred years ago – and perhaps the major difference I discovered is that many breeds which were working dogs then are domestic now.
The Shepherd’s Dog
The Cur Dog
The Greenland Dog
The Bulldog
The Mastiff
The Ban Dog
The Dalmatian
The Irish Greyhound
The Greyhound
The Lurcher
The Terrier
The Beagle
The Harrier
The Fox Hound
The Old English Hound
The Spanish Pointer
The English Setter
The Newfoundland Dog
The Large Rough Water Dog
The Large Water Spaniel
The Small Water Spaniel
The Springer
The Comforter
The Turnspit
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Thomas Bewick’s Cat
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I discovered a copy of Thomas Bewick’s General History of Quadrupeds from 1824 in the Spitalfields Market and – of course – I turned first to his entry upon the domestic cat, from which I publish these excerpts below.
To describe an animal so well known might seem a superfluous task – we shall only, therefore, select some of its peculiarities as are least obvious and may have escaped the notice of inattentive observers.
It is generally remarked that Cats can see in the dark, but though this is not absolutely the case, yet it is certain that they can see with much less light than other animals, owing to the peculiar structure of their eyes – the pupils of which are capable of being contracted or dilated in proportion to the degree of light by which they are affected. The pupil of the Cat, during the day, is perpetually contracted and it is with difficulty that it can see in strong light, but in the twilight the pupil regains its natural roundness, the animal enjoys perfect vision and takes advantage of this superiority to discover and surprise its prey.
The cry of the Cat is loud, piercing and clamorous, and whether expressive of anger or of love is equally violent and hideous. Its call may be heard at a great distance and is so well known to the whole fraternity that, on some occasions, several hundred Cats have been brought together from different parts. Invited by the piercing cries of distress from a suffering fellow creature, they assemble in crowds and with loud squalls and yells express their horrid sympathies. They frequently tear the miserable object to pieces and, with the most blind and furious rage, fall upon each other, killing and wounding indiscriminately, till there is scarcely one left. These terrible conflicts happen only in the night.
The Cat is particularly averse to water, cold and bad smells. It is fond of certain perfumes but is more particularly attracted by the smell of valerian and cat mint – it rubs itself against them and if not prevented will infallibly destroy them.
Though extremely useful in destroying the vermin that infest our houses, the Cat seems little attached to the persons of those who afford it protection. It appears to be under no subjection and acts only for itself.
All its views are confined to the place where it has been brought up. If carried elsewhere, it seems lost and bewildered, and frequently takes the first opportunity of escaping to its former haunts. Frequent instances are recollected of Cats having returned to the place from whence they have been carried, though at many miles distance, and even across rivers, where they could not possibly have any knowledge of the road or the situation that would apparently lead them to it.
In the time of Hoel the Good, King of Wales, who died in the year 948, laws were made to fix the different prices of animals, among which the Cat was included as being at that period of great importance on account if its scarceness and utility. The price of a kitten was fixed at one penny, till proof could be given of its having caught a mouse twopence, after which it was rated as fourpence which was a great sum in those days.
If anyone should steal or kill the Cat that guarded the Prince’s granary, he was either to forfeit a milk ewe, or her fleece and lamb, or as much wheat as when poured on the Cat suspended by its tail would form a heap high enough to cover the tip of the former.
Hence we may conclude that Cats were not originally native of these islands, and from the great care taken to improve and preserve the breed of this prolific creature, we may suppose, were but little known in that period. Whatever credit we may allow to the circumstances of the well known story of Whittington and his Cat, it is another proof of the great value set upon this animal in former times.
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Blackie, the Last Spitalfields Market Cat
At Morden College
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At the southeast corner of Blackheath Park stands a red-brick nineteenth century gatehouse with a drive curving beyond and disappearing into the trees. You might wonder if this is the London retreat of a reclusive plutocrat, yet a sign announcing ‘Morden College’ disabuses you of this notion. So then you assume it must be an exclusive private school and you look for errant pupils in uniform, yet you are wrong again. Morden College is one of the capital’s best-kept secrets.
It was founded by Sir John Morden (1623-1708) in 1685 as a charitable home for ‘decayed merchants’ of the Levant Company and constructed in the style of Christopher Wren by Wren’s master-mason Edward Strong. Remarkably, it is still going strong and now offers good quality retirement accommodation to four hundred people, including a nursing home.
I walked up the sweeping drive to pass through the main entrance beneath the statues of Sir John & Lady Susan Morden and arrive at the central quadrangle, which looks as fine today as it did three hundred years ago. It was my privilege to enjoy lunch in the dining hall, sitting beneath the portrait of Sir John, followed by a stroll around the well-kept gardens.
Sir John Morden administered the college himself in his final years and it flourishes today as a inspirational and far-sighted example of philanthropy. Born into a modest family in the parish of St Bride’s, Fleet St, he rose by his own ability through an apprenticeship to a Committee Member of the East India Company. After a successful posting to Aleppo, he later became Deputy Governor of the Company and a Board Member of the Levant Company. Yet he also lived through the Plague and the Great Fire, causing him to move from the City to Greenwich where Charles II held court and many distinguished Londoners sought refuge at the time. As his friend Daniel Defoe noted, “The beauty of Greenwich is owing to the lustre of its inhabitants.”
Without children, Sir John had no heir for his fortune and decided to use his wealth to found a college for, “Poor Merchants and such as have lost their Estates by accidents, danger and Perills of the Seas or by any other way of means in their honest endeavours to get a living by means of Merchandizing.”
Defoe wrote describing the venture.
“I had it from his own mouth that he was to make apartments for forty decay’d merchants to whom he resolv’d to allow forty shillings per annum each, with coals, a gown (and servants to look after their apartments) and many other conveniences so as the make their lives as comfortable as possible.
Each apartments consists of a bedchamber and a study, or large closet for their retreat, and to divert themselves with books etc.
They have a public kitchen, a hall to dine in. There is also a very good apartment for the chaplain, whose salary is fifty shillings a year, there are also dwellings for the cooks, butlers, porter, the women, and other servants, and reasonable salaries allow’d them. Behind the chapel is a handsome burial ground wall’d in, there are also very good gardens. In a word, it is the noblest foundation and most considerable single piece of charity that has been erected in England since Sutton’s hospital in London.”
While enjoying the benefits of good fortune, John Morden recognised that it was equally possible to suffer ill-fortune and – with startling insight and generosity – left his inheritance to support to those who needed it, in perpetuity. When William Morris campaigned to save the Trinity Green Almhouses in Whitechapel in the eighteen-eighties, he argued that we need them as a reminder of the enduring spirit of fellowship. I came away from Morden College uplifted by the same thought, humbled and touched by John Morden’s open-handed appreciation of the needs of others, and with a renewed recognition of the responsibility we all have to support those who are vulnerable in our society.
Anagram & acrostic in memory of Sir John Morden over the entrance to the dining hall
At the southeast corner of Blackheath Park stands a red-brick nineteenth century gatehouse
Constructed in the style of Christopher Wren by Wren’s master mason Edward Strong
“His statue in stone set up by his lady and since her death her own is set up near by the trustees” – Daniel Defoe commented on the statues of Sir John & Lady Susan Morden when he visited in 1725
Entrance to the quadrangle
“And that there be a Sun Dyall set up for Keeping the Clock right w’ch often goes wrong.” The motto reads “Sic Umbra, sic vita,” comparing the transiency of life to a fleeting shadow.
“the chaplain, whose salary is fifty shillings a year”
Mulberry tree c.1700
The college fire engine was presented by Richard Chiswell in 1751
Morden College, 1755
Sir John Morden (Courtesy of Wellcome Foundation)
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Andrew Scott’s East End
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In Sclater St, Spitalfields
“In the autumn of 1974, we stuffed our belongings into a van and headed for London. Like all newcomers, we had to find somewhere to live – and fast, since none of us had family or friends in the capital. Someone who knew someone directed us to the Tower Hamlets Squatters’ Union, a grass roots community organisation who could help us squat an empty property. The people who ran the Union believed that the amount of council property sitting empty or scheduled for demolition was a disgrace. And we agreed with them.
We were first ‘put into’ two prefab dwellings in Shadwell. The next morning we were evicted (and secretly relieved). The Squatters’ Union then delivered us to a terraced house in Stepney where we stayed for several months, hardly able to believe our luck. There was no bath or indoor toilet, but did we care? We were in our early twenties, hungry for everything London could offer. That included the East London street markets – rich repositories of fresh fruit, vegetables, and every sort of tat.
We adored London – its throb and thrum, its variety and eccentricity. Our East End neighbours were tolerant of us, but others were not so lucky. We witnessed blatant racism for the first time. Andrew took photographs for the Squatters’ Union to help publicise their anti-racist work with Bangladeshi families and to document the re-housing of some of those living in the worst housing conditions.”
Caroline Gilfillan & Andrew Scott
In Sclater St, Spitalfields
In Sclater St, Spitalfields
In Sclater St, Spitalfields
In Spitalfields
In Stoneyard Lane, Poplar
At Stephen & Matilda Houses, Wapping
In York Sq, Stepney
In Stoneyard Lane, Poplar
In Bromley St, Stepney
In Corfield St, Bethnal Green
In Corfield St, Bethnal Green
In Corfield St, Bethnal Green
In Corfield St, Bethnal Green
In Aldgate
In Corfield St, Bethnal Green
In Poplar
South of Commercial Rd, Stepney
In Commercial Rd, Stepney
At Stephen & Matilda Houses, Wapping
In Whitechapel
In Whitechapel
In Whitechapel
In York Sq, Stepney
In Ben Jonson Rd, Stepney
In Ben Jonson Rd, Stepney
In Ben Jonson Rd, Stepney
In Broad St Station
In Bromley St, Stepney
Dock Wall, St Katherine’s Basin
South of Commercial Rd
South of Commercial Rd
In Aldgate
In Whitechapel Rd
In Commercial Rd, Stepney
The George in Commercial Rd, Stepney
Photographs copyright © Andrew Scott
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Caroline Gilfillan & Andrew Scott’s East End
The Mystery Of Arthur Cousins’ Printers
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(Click to enlarge this image and study it in detail)
‘A tribute to the pioneers and masters of printing who through 500 years have perpetuated and adorned the written word, spreading far and wide the rich currency of ideas, knowledge & understanding’
Who can name the printers featured in this epic wooden relief carving by Arthur Cousins in 1951? I have made some suggestions below but I call upon the superior knowledge of my readers to identify them all.
The origin of this panel, which was acquired by anthropologist & collector Dr Kaori O’Connor at a sale room in the eighties, is a mystery too. Dr O’ Connor understood it came from the office of a print union. Can anyone enlighten us further or tell us more about Arthur Cousins?
On the far left is the profile of a Chinese printer with a chronological sequence of figures from the history of printing in the West arranged from left to right. I think I identify William Morris and Eric Gill on the right, but those of earlier periods are unknown to me, although I recognise the gods Minerva and Mercury presiding overhead.
Readers may recall that it was Dr O’Connor who rescued Cecil Osborne’s murals, commissioned for St Pancras Town Hall, in a similar enlightened fashion from a general sale at Christies in South Kensington, and thanks to her initiative they have been reinstalled in the Town Hall again.
Now Dr O’Connor wants to find a permanent home for Arthur Cousins’ wooden relief of printers where it can be seen publicly. It is approximately eight feet wide by six feet high and carved into a block of oak a couple of inches thick.
If any of my readers can help, please drop me a line to spitalfieldslife@gmail.com and I will forward your message to Dr O’Connor.
William Morris is seated on the left with Eric Gill holding a tablet on the right. Who is standing behind Morris and who are the two men in the middle?
Who are these Early Modern printers? Could one be William Caslon?
Is that William Caxton standing to the right. Who are these Renaissance printers?
Arthur Cousins, 1951
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