Spitalfields Life

Fan commemorating the Battle of Dettingen by Francis Chassereau, 1743. Lacquered wood, etching & watercolour on paper (Helene Alexander Collection)

Whilst the Fan Museum is closed, curator Jacob Moss reveals recent research into Huguenot fan makers in an online talk organised by Huguenots of Spitalfields, tomorrow Thursday July 22nd at noon.

From the seventeenth century, the making and selling of handheld fans in London involved significant numbers of Huguenot refugees. Jacob Moss explores the complexities of a once thriving industry by tracing the Chassereau dynasty who, following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, fled from France to London where successive generations were fan-makers throughout the eighteenth century.

Click here to book

The Fan Museum is the brainchild of Helene Alexander who has devoted her life with an heroic passion to assembling the world’s greatest collection of fans – which currently stands at over five thousand, dating from the eleventh century to the present day. Below you can see a selection from the museum collection.

Folding fan with bone monture & woodblock printed leaf commemorating the Restoration of Charles II. 
English, c. 1660 
(Helene Alexander Collection)

Folding fan (opens two ways) with ivory monture. Each stick is affixed to a painted palmette.
 European (probably French), c. 1670s
 (Helene Alexander Collection)

Ivory brisé fan painted with curious depictions of European figures.
 Chinese for export, c. 1700(Helene Alexander Collection)

Ivory brisé fan painted in the style of Hondecoeter.
 Dutch, c. 1700 (Helene Alexander Collection)

Folding fan with bone monture. The printed & hand-coloured leaf has a mask motif with peepholes. 
English, c. 1730

Folding fan with ivory monture, the guards with silver piqué work. The leaf is painted on the obverse with vignettes themed around the life cycle of one man. European (possibly German)  c. 1730/40 
(Helene Alexander Collection)

Folding fan with ivory monture & painted leaf. 
English, c. 1740s
 (Helene Alexander Collection)

Folding fan with ivory monture & painted leaf, showing Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens.
 English, c. 1750s

Folding fan with wooden monture & printed leaf, showing couples promenading. 
French, c. 1795-1800
 (Helene Alexander Collection)

Folding fan with gilt mother of pearl monture & painted leaf, signed ‘E. Parmentier.
’ French, c. 1860s

‘Landscape in Martinique’, design for a fan by Paul Gauguin. Watercolour & pastel on paper. French, c. 1887

Folding fan with blonde tortoiseshell monture, one guard set with guioché enamelling, silver & gold work by Fabergé. Fine Brussels lace leaf. 
French/Russian, c. 1880s
 (Helene Alexander Collection)

Folding fan with smoked mother of pearl monture, the leaf painted by Walter Sickert with a music hall scene showing Little Dot Hetherington at the Old Bedford Theatre. 
English, c. 1890

Folding fan with tortoiseshell monture carved to resemble sunrays. Canepin leaf studded with rose diamonds & rock crystal, & painted with a female figure & putti amidst clouds, signed ‘G. Lasellaz ’92’. 
French, c. 1892
 (Helene Alexander Collection)

Folding fan with horn monture & painted leaf, signed ‘Luc. F.’
 French, c. 1900

Folding fan with ivory & mother of pearl monture, the painted leaf, signed (Maurice) ‘Leloir.’ 
French, c. 1900
 (Helene Alexander Collection)

Folding fan with mother of pearl monture & painted leaf, signed ‘Billotey.’ 
French, c. 1905
 (Helene Alexander Collection)

Horn brisé fan with design of brambles & insets of mother of pearl. 
French, c.1905
 (Helene Alexander Collection)

Folding fan with Art Nouveau style tinted mother of pearl monture & painted leaf, signed ‘G. Darcey.’ 
French, c. 1905
 (Helene Alexander Collection)

Folding fan with tortoiseshell monture & feather ‘marquetry’ leaf. French, c. 1920

The Fan Museum, 12 Crooms Hill, Greenwich, SE10 8ER

This is the last day of our SUMMER SALE which ends tonight at midnight. Simply add code ‘SUMMER’ at check out to get 50% discount on your order.

Click here to visit the SPITALFIELDS LIFE BOOKSHOP

Remembering Roy Emmins (1939-2021) who died last week

On a humid midsummer’s day in Whitechapel, the ideal place to be was up on the roof with Roy Emmins, in his wonderful sculpture garden at the back of the Royal London Hospital. Peering down upon everyone else, looking like ants going about their business with entirely mysterious imperatives, it was a refreshingly liberating experience, and if there was any breeze to be had, you felt its cooling influence up there, wafting the scents of Roy’s flowers over the rooftops. From this lofty roost, Roy looked back fondly to the hospital where for thirty-two years he worked as porter, surrounded by the sculptures that occupied him since he took early retirement from the hospital.

For the last forty years, Roy inhabited this tiny caretaker’s flat, added as an afterthought upon the roof of a streamlined art deco block in Turner St, and it was my pleasure to visit him there. Roy took me up in the lift to the top floor, opened his blue front door and genially ushered me inside. To my delight, I found four small rooms organised meticulously, like cabins on a boat, with all kinds of shelves and cabinets where everything had its place, and every space was embellished with the great variety of Roy’s extraordinary sculptures and paintings, bestowing a magical presence of their own – from tiny birds shaped out of tinfoil to graceful human figures hewn from alabaster.

Each narrow room had windows on either side with views across the roofs and far over the city on both sides. On the south side was a bare roof covered in pigeons who conveniently left fertilizer that Roy gratefully collected for his flourishing garden on the north side. Stocked from Columbia Rd and Watney Markets, Roy’s roof garden possessed an intriguing selection of plants. Hardy varieties that withstand wind and thrive in dry conditions suited this location best, and I admired Roy’s inspired combinations of succulents, miniature trees and colourful border planting, like heucheras, artemisias, gazzanias, ox-eye daisies and mallow, mixed in with potatoes and three kinds of tomato plants.

Yet it was the sculpture that made Roy’s garden pure poetry, his charismatic stone and concrete figures encrusted with lichen and bronze figures patinated green by the elements. At first, you did not spot all of them lurking among the plants, driftwood, shells and pots, but, as they caught your eye, you saw the individual sculptures against the backdrop of the distant cityscape, proposing extraordinary contrasts of scale that fired the imagination.

Roy’s earthly paradise was occasionally shattered when helicopters flew low overhead to land at the nearby helipad on the roof of the hospital. It gave our conversation some pauses for consideration, as we sipped our tea, waiting for the din of the whirring steel monster to pass over.

In time, the authorities at the hospital conveniently moved the helipad away from Roy’s flat, up onto the top of the new gleaming blue towers. The startling modernity of this development existed in bizarre contrast to Roy’s first experience when he began working at the hospital in 1964 as a catering porter, and he remembered delivering milk to the matron’s flat in the eighteenth century west wing, with an old parlour retaining all of its nineteenth century furnishings including an aspidistra on a stand.

To the east, directly across Turner St, sits the deconsecrated church of St Augustine with St Philip, now used as the hospital library and archive, where the Elephant Man’s hat is kept, and Roy pointed out the bronze bell at our eye level, still hanging high upon the rooftop, where once he saw a kestrel perch to pull the feathers off a small bird and devour it for its dinner. To the west, gesturing in the opposite direction, Roy pointed out the former hostel in Fieldgate St that once counted Lenin and Orwell amongst its transient occupants. In this location, rich in every kind of cultural and historical resonance, Roy was alive to all the stories, which served as a colourful background to the quiet home where he spent most of his time in his roof garden at this time of year.

At that time, Roy acquired a new companion, Max, a short-haired black tomcat with a sturdy muscular body and a forthright personality. Previously living the life of a homeless alley cat, with battle scars and mange to prove it, under Roy’s benign influence Max already looked healthier. He had quickly made himself sublimely at home on Roy’s rooftop, even jumping with reckless innocence across the chasm onto the chimney stack of The Good Samaritan pub next door and sunning himself among the chimney pots. As Roy and I enjoyed our tea and idle conversation upon the roof top beneath the sunshine and slow-moving clouds, with astute opportunism Max took advantage of the companionable shade we created, stretching out beneath our seats.

Moving between his rooftop flat and the studio down in Cable St, where he made his sculptures, it was a modest yet enviable existence Roy carved out for himself. As I said “Goodbye”, he handed me a bag with the noble paper mache lion that I bought from him, which now sits upon my desk as a constant reminder of Roy’s vision. I do not know if Roy Emmins’ placid spirit was the result of the life he has created for himself or whether his personality led him to seek out these calm spaces conducive to his sympathetic nature. So instead I must credit it all to the unique quality of his inventive imagination, creating such a prodigious range of work with constantly renewing delight.

We are seeking a permanent home for Roy’s sculptures where they can be displayed – a museum, a gallery, or a local school or city farm perhaps? If you can help please drop a line to spitalfieldslife@gmail.com

Max contemplates a death-defying leap onto the chimney stack  of The Good Samaritan pub next door

Roy Emmins’ paper maché lion

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Roy Emmins, Sculptor

Roy Emmins died on Wednesday aged eighty-two

Roy Emmins (1939-2021)

At the furthest end of Cable St are the Cable St Studios where Roy Emmins cloistered himself, working six days every week alone in his tiny workshop. A former porter at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, after more than thirty years service Roy took early retirement to devote himself to sculpture, and his studio was crammed to the roof with innumerable creations that bore testimony to his prodigious talent and potent imagination.

When Roy opened the door to me, I could not believe my eyes. There were so many sculptures, it took my breath away. With more artefacts than a Pharoah’s tomb, I did not know where to look first. Roy smiled indulgently at my reaction. Not many people made it into the inner sanctum of Roy Emmin’s imagination. He was not a demonstrative man and he had no big explanation, not expecting praise or inviting criticism either. In fact, he had no art world rhetoric at all, just a room packed with breathtaking sculpture.

First to catch my attention were large carvings hewn from tree trunks, some in bare wood, others painted in gaudy colours like sculptures in medieval cathedrals and sharing the same vigorous poetry, full of energetic life and acute observation of the natural world. Next, I saw elaborate painted constructions in papier-mache, scenes from the natural world, gulls on cliffs, fish in the ocean, monkeys in the jungle and more. All meticulously imagined, and in an aesthetic reminiscent of the dioramas of the Natural History Museum but with more soul. I stood with my eyes roving, absorbing the immense detail and noticing smaller individual sculptures in ceramic, bronze, and plaster, on shelves and in cubbyholes. Turning one hundred and eighty degrees, I faced a wall hung with table tops, each incised with relief sculptures. I sat on a chair to collect my thoughts and cast my eyes to the window sill where sat a menagerie of creatures, all contrived with exquisite modesty and consummate skill from tinfoil and chocolate wrappers.

The abiding impression was of teeming life. Every figure quick with it, as if they might all spring into animation at any moment, transforming the studio into an overcrowded Noah’s Ark, with Roy as an entirely convincing Mr Noah. In his work, Roy emulated the supreme creator, reconstructed Eden – fashioning all the beloved animals, imbuing them with life and movement, and creating jungles and forests and oceans – imparting a magical intensity to everything he touches. There was a sublime quality to Roy Emmins’ vision.

Roy’s sculptures are totems, and his carved tree trunks resemble totem poles, with images that evoke the spirits of the natural world and nourish the human spirit too. Even Roy’s tinfoil stags possess an emotionalism – born of a tension between the heroic dignity of the creature he sculpted so eloquently and the humble material from which each figure was fashioned.

It is a paradox that Roy, an English visionary, exemplified in his own personality – which was so appealingly lacking in ego yet tenacious of ambition in sculpture. Originally apprenticed as a graphic artist, he developed Wilson’s disease, which caused him to shake, yet spared him military service. After years attending the Royal London Hospital, a drug was founded to treat his affliction but by then, Roy admitted, he preferred the atmosphere of the hospital to the design studio because it was an environment where he always was meeting new people.

Taking a job as a porter, Roy also attended evening classes at Sir John Cass School of Art in Whitechapel, pursuing painting, ceramics, life modelling, and wood-carving. Once these closed down in 1984, Roy joined a group of wood-carvers who met at the weekends in the garden studio of their ex-tutor Michael Leman in Greenford. When the hurricane came in 1987, they hired a crane to collect fallen trees – and one of these became Roy’s first tree trunk carving.

When he took retirement in 1995, Roy was permitted to retain his caretaker’s flat in Turner St at the rear of the hospital. After a stint at the Battlebridge Centre in King’s Cross, where he had free studio in return for one day a week building flats for homeless people, Roy came to the Cable St Studios. Always working on several sculptures at once, Roy often returned to pieces, reworking them and adding ideas, which may go some way to explain the intensity of detail and richness of ideas apparent in all his sculpture.

Looking at Roy’s work, I wondered what influence it had on his psyche, wheeling patients around for thirty years at the hospital. The sense of wonder at the natural world is exuberantly apparent, but this is not the work of an innocent either. In a major sculpture that sits outside his door entitled “The Shadow of Man,” Roy dramatises the destructive instinct of mankind, yet it is not a simple didactic work because the agents of destruction are portrayed with humanity. Again, it brought me back to medieval carving which commonly subverts its own allegory, picturing villains with charisma, and there was a strange pathos when Roy placed his hand affectionately upon the head of a figure wielding a chainsaw, a contradictory force embodying both destruction and creation.

Roy inherited his love of people from a father who worked his whole life on the railway and ended up manager of the bar on Liverpool St Station, while Roy’s mother was skilled at assembling electrical parts, which she did at home, imparting an ability in intricate work to her son. Each of Roy’s three uncles, a master carpenter, plumber and builder were model makers and Roy’s brother made models too, though, in contrast to Roy, he made ships and cars, mechanical things.

I am fascinated by the creative skills of working men expressed in areas of endeavour parallel to their working lives. Roy’s work exists in the tradition of the detailed handicrafts undertaken by sailors and prisoners, and the model railways of yesteryear, yet in its accomplishment and as a complete vision of the world, Roy’s work transcends these precedents. Roy was a unique talent and a true sculptor who grasped of the essence of his medium.

Showing me a wire and plasticine dancer, with a skirt made from the paper cases manufactured for buns, Roy explained that a figure must have three points of contact with the ground to stand upright. In this instance, the ballerina had one foot pointing forward  and a back foot that met the ground at toe and heel. Roy placed the precarious figure on a surface and, just like his spindly tinfoil creatures, it stood with perfect balance.

We are seeking a permanent home for Roy’s sculptures where they can be displayed – a museum, a gallery, or a local school or city farm perhaps? If you can help please drop a line to spitalfieldslife@gmail.com

Sea birds – painted wood and milliput

Rain Forest – painted wood enhanced with milliput

Coral Reef – paper maché and milliput

I spy breakfast – painted wood

Arable Life – Cedar wood

Bush Life – painted wood and milliput

Coral Reef – ashwood

Wood Mouse & Butterfly – painted wood with milliput

Owl – branch and painted milliput

Galapagos – limewood

Hare – painted milliput

Jungle – painted Zeldovia wood

White Horse – paper maché

African Mountain – painted wood and milliput

Stag – paper maché

Roy Emmins with his sculpture ‘The Shadow of Man.’

Roy’s paper maché lion sits upon my desk in Spitalfields.