The East End Flower Women Of 2020
We are keen to support these local growers who are offering Spitalfields Life readers a weekly bunch of flowers fresh from the field to lift your spirits in the lockdown.
Click here to subscribe for eight weeks of locally-grown seasonal flowers
Portrait by Rachel Ferriman
East End flower women have been recurring feature for centuries on this side of the capital. I am thinking not simply of Liza Doolittle, but of the itinerant herb women who sold homemade remedies and the famous watercress sellers of Shoreditch who were celebrated for their independent spirits.
Historically, this was always the garden of London. Before all the terraces were built, it was occupied by nurseries and market gardens tended by growers who rose at dawn, walking into the city and crying their produce through the densely populated streets. Today this horticultural tradition persists in Columbia Rd Market which boasts some notable female traders.
Yet even as the pandemic has closed down the market it has created a new breed of East End flower sellers or plantswomen, as I should call them, because they grow their own produce too. Let me introduce Lulu Cox, Jess Blume and Olivia Wetherley Wilson.
Working separately, all three supplied flowers under commission for weddings and other events until the pandemic took away their business and left them high and dry with their nurseries of lovingly nurtured flowers coming into bloom. Working in collaboration as the Spring Summer Autumn Winter Collective, they have adapted to this new situation by offering subscriptions for a weekly bunch of locally-grown seasonal flowers to brighten people’s homes during the lockdown.
The trio describe themselves as ‘florists’ and they fulfil the older meaning of this word which was used in a broader sense in the eighteenth century to mean plant enthusiasts. This is the usage intended in the naming of The Florists Arms in Bethnal Green, a rare legacy of the plant culture that once flourished across East London.
I was jealous of Contributing Photographer Rachel Ferriman who got to visit the flower nurseries and take pictures of the blooms, but at least I was able to meet with two of the florist trio, Olivia & Jess, for a socially-distanced interview in the garden surrounding the bandstand at Arnold Circus – which is perhaps the next best thing.
Olivia – I have always wanted to be involved in floristry and I didn’t understand why until my grandmother told me that her mother had been a florist at a large house. My grandmother always kept a beautiful garden so I feel that it is in my genes that I am drawn to flowers.
Jess – I think many people have an affinity with plants – I know I do – but a lot don’t allow themselves the time to tap into it. These last two months have allowed people that opportunity. The more you become involved with plants, the more you realise it is a slow way of working. You are at the mercy of the seasons and you might plant something in January that does not flower until the next year.
Olivia – Before this month, we were events florists but just this month we have launched our collective with Lulu Cox, selling our flowers together. She was a chef at the Rochelle Canteen but now she is a grower. By growing the flowers ourselves, we want to celebrate the seasons, yet we each realised it is difficult to do this on our own.
Jess – I worked in advertising but I became tired of working in an office. Looking back, I realise that my mother was guide at Kew Gardens and she used to take me with her several times each week. I walked the tour with her while she was practising. Initially, it did not have an effect on me but I have always needed to work with my hands and I was very drawn to working outdoors in nature. Growing started as a hobby and became all encompassing, so I realised I had to make it work. I made the break and became a florist five years ago. I don’t think many people realise how far their flowers have travelled, so I realised I needed to grow my own and support producers here in the United Kingdom.
Olivia – It’s not just the distances that flowers are flown, it is the whole industry, the unregulated pesticide use in other countries which adversely affects the women who pick those flowers. It became untenable for me to work in floristry without growing my own flowers here in this country.
Jess – It all comes back to people’s expectations and the speed at which they want things, demanding flowers out of season. Few people think about it – where their flowers come from and the repercussions of that – so this is definitely a time for a rethink.
Dead-heading sweet peas
Jess Blume
Olivia Wetherly Wilson
Lulu Cox
Jess and Olivia outside Leila’s Shop
Photographs copyright © Rachel Ferriman
At present, orders from the Spring Summer Autumn Winter Collective can be collected from Leila’s Shop, 15 Calvert Avenue E2, London Borough of Jam, 51d Chatsworth Rd E15, and Popham’s Bakery, 19 Prebend St, N1.
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Mortlake Jugs
Once, every household in London possessed an ale jug, in the days before it was safe to drink water or tea became widely affordable. These cheaply-produced salt-glazed stoneware items, that could be bought for a shilling or less, were prized for their sprigged decoration and often painstakingly repaired to extend their lives, and even prized for their visual appeal when broken and no longer of use.
All these jugs from the collection of Philip Mernick were produced in Mortlake, when potteries were being set up around London to supply the growing market for these household wares throughout the eighteenth century. The first of the Mortlake potteries was begun by John Sanders and taken over by his son William Sanders in 1745, while the second was opened by Benjamin Kishere who had worked for Sanders, and this was taken over by his son William Kishere in 1834.
These jugs appeal to me with their rich brown colouration that evokes the tones of crusty bread and their lively intricate decoration, mixing images of English country life with Classical motifs reminiscent of Wedgwood. Eighteenth-century Mortlake jugs are distinguished by the attenuated baluster shape that follows the form of ceramics in the medieval world yet is replaced in the early-nineteenth century by the more bulbous form of a jug which is still common today.
There is an attractive organic quality to these highly-wrought yet utilitarian artefacts, encrusted with decorative sprigs like barnacles upon a ship’s hull. They were once universally-familiar objects in homes and ale houses, and in daily use by Londoners of all classes.
1790s ale jug repaired with brass handle and engraved steel rim
A panel of “The Midnight Conversation” after a print by Hogarth
Classical motifs mixed with rural images
A panel of “Cupid’s Procession”
A woman on horseback portrayed on this jug
Agricultural implements and women riders
Toby Fillpot
Panel of Racehorses
Cupid’s procession with George III & Queen Charlotte and Prince of Wales & Caroline of Brunswick
Panel of “Cockerell on the Dungheap”
Panel of “The Two Boors”
Square- based jug of 1800/1810
Toby Fillpot
William Kishere, Pottery Mortlake, Surrey
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Adam Dant’s Map Of Viral London
Contributing Cartographer Adam Dant has kept himself occupied during the lockdown by drawing this map of contagion in the capital
Click to enlarge
ADAM DANT INTRODUCES HIS VIRAL LONDON MAP
“In my studio next to Liverpool St Station, I was colouring a busy cityscape of Leicester Sq. The drawing was finished in early March but, looking at it now, it struck me that I had created a scene I may not encounter again for a long time – a panorama from a pre-Coronavirus age.
My Viral London is a cartographic representation of how the capital has been assaulted by epidemics throughout history. From the plague of 664AD which struck monastic communities, destabilised the church, to the AIDS crisis and ‘The London Patient’ who was the second case to be cured.
The effect of fifteen hundred years of epidemics, transforming Londoners’ behaviour and their landscape, is characterised not by major social projects but by incidents that are commonly anecdotal and poignant. Walking home through a deserted City of London by night, the narrator of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of The Plague Year, witnesses a woman open her window to cry, ‘Death, Death, Death!’. Erasmus, visiting London during an outbreak of the Sweyting Sickness, was too scared to enter his lodgings to collect his boots for fear of catching the illness. In 1918, Londoners celebrating the Armistice were unaware that the deadly Spanish Flu was being spread amongst the revellers.
I started wondering how pandemics might have coloured the sensibilities of artists in the past. We always imagine life was much nastier back then.
Many of my artistic predecessors witnessed episodes of viral assault. Brueghel’s The Triumph of Death is underpinned by the ever present risk of plague, Hollar engraved views of London before and after the Great Fire which had followed the pestilence like a purgative, and no Renaissance artist working in Venice was ever safe from the French Pox, also known as Neapolitan bone-ache or syphilis, to give its modern name. Among those paintings by Canaletto teeming with people, La Serenissima contains a masked and wigged figure wearing a beaked mask filled with herbs to ward off the pestilence.
I am wondering if my depictions of packed public spaces will serve as perpetual descriptions of ‘how we used to be’ and whether I should now be drawing more classical crowd scenes in which figures waft past each other at arms’ length, with a courtly grace conferring mandatory social distancing.
Perhaps Leicester Sq, Sloane Sq, Berkley Sq, the Royal Exchange or any of the other teeming centres of life that I have portrayed may never appear the same again after the war on Covid-19, any more than they did after the Blitz?”
Adam Dant’s Viral London Map was commissioned by The Critic
CLICK TO ORDER A COPY OF MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND BY ADAM DANT
Adam Dant’s MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND is a mighty monograph collecting together all your favourite works by Spitalfields Life‘s Contributing Cartographer in a beautiful big hardback book.
Including a map of London riots, the locations of early coffee houses and a colourful depiction of slang through the centuries, Adam Dant’s vision of city life and our prevailing obsessions with money, power and the pursuit of pleasure may genuinely be described as ‘Hogarthian.’
Unparalleled in his draughtsmanship and inventiveness, Adam Dant explores the byways of London’s cultural history in his ingenious drawings, annotated with erudite commentary and offering hours of fascination for the curious.
The book includes an extensive interview with Adam Dant by The Gentle Author.
Adam Dant’s limited edition prints including the VIRAL LONDON MAP are available to purchase through TAG Fine Arts
Wonderful London
It is my pleasure to publish these dignified and characterful portraits of Londoners, believed to be by photographer Donald McLeish (1879-1950), selected from the three volumes of Wonderful London edited by St John Adcock and produced by The Fleetway House in the nineteen-twenties.
Telescope Man on Westminster Bridge
Old woman who inhabited the alleys off Fleet St
Breton Onion Seller
Costermonger and child
Cats’ Meat Man
Knife Grinder
Charwoman
Islington Window Cleaner
Flower Seller
Concertina Player
Hurdy-Gurdy Man
Gramophone Man
Escapologist
Wandering Harpist
Street Sweeper
Scavenger
District Messenger
Telephone Messenger
Railway Fireman
Railway Engine Driver
Carman
Railway Porter
Gold Beaters
Gas Fitters
Chimney Sweep
Telephone Cable Man
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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List Of Local Shops Open For Business
Every Wednesday, I publish the up to date list of stalwarts that remain open in Spitalfields. Readers are especially encouraged to support small independent businesses who offer an invaluable service to the community. This list confirms that it is possible to source all essential supplies locally without recourse to supermarkets.
Be advised many shops are operating limited opening hours at present, so I recommend you call in advance to avoid risking a wasted journey. Please send any additions or amendments for next week’s list to spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
This weeks illustrations are photographs by Tony Hall from the sixties and seventies. See the full set here
GROCERS & FOOD SHOPS
The Albion, 2/4 Boundary St
Ali’s Mini Superstore, 50d Greatorex St
AM2PM, 210 Brick Lane
As Nature Intended, 132 Commercial St
Banglatown Cash & Carry, 67 Hanbury St
Breid Bakery, Arch 72, Dunbridge St
Brick Lane Minimarket, 100 Brick Lane
The Butchery Ltd, 6a Lamb St (Open Thursdays only)
City Supermarket, 10 Quaker St
Costprice Minimarket, 41 Brick Lane
Faizah Minimarket, 2 Old Montague St
JB Foodstore, 97 Brick Lane
Haajang’s Corner, 78 Wentworth St
Leila’s Shop, 17 Calvert Avenue (Call 0207 729 9789 between 10am-noon on Tuesday-Saturdays to place your order and collect on the same day from 2pm-4pm)
The Melusine Fish Shop, St Katharine Docks
Nisa Local, 92 Whitechapel High St
Pavilion Bakery, 130 Columbia Rd
Rinkoff’s Bakery, 224 Jubilee Street & 79 Vallance Road
Spitalfields City Farm, Buxton St (Order through website)
Sylhet Sweet Shop, 109 Hanbury St
Taj Stores, 112 Brick Lane
Zaman Brothers, Fish & Meat Bazaar, 19 Brick Lane
TAKE AWAY FOOD SHOPS
Before you order from a delivery app, why not call the take away or restaurant direct?
Absurd Bird Fried Chicken, 54 Commercial St
Al Badam Fried Chicken, 37 Brick Lane
Allpress Coffee, 58 Redchurch St
Band of Burgers, 22 Osborn St
Beef & Birds, Brick Lane
Beigel Bake, 159 Brick Lane
Beigel Shop, 155 Brick Lane
Bellboi Coffee, 104 Sclater St
Bengal Village, 75 Brick Lane
Big Moe’s Diner, 95 Whitechapel High St
Burro E Salvia Pastificio, 52 Redchurch St
The Carpenters Arms, 73 Cheshire St (Open for take away beers)
China Feng, 43 Commercial St
Circle & Slice Pizza, 11 Whitechapel Rd
Dark Sugars, 45a Hanbury St (Take away ice cream and deliveries of chocolate)
Donburi & Co, Korean & Japanese, 13 Artillery Passage
Duke of Wellington, 12 Toynbee St (Open for take away beers)
Eastern Eye Balti House, 63a Brick Lane
Enso Thai & Japanese, 94 Brick Lane
Exmouth Coffee Shop, 83 Whitechapel High St
Grounded Coffee Shop, 9 Whitechapel Rd
Holy Shot Coffee, 155 Bethnal Green Rd
Hotbox Smoked Meats, 46-48 Commercial St
Jack The Chipper, 74 Whitechapel High St
Jonestown Coffee, 215 Bethnal Green Rd
Laboratorio Pizza, 79 Brick Lane
La Cucina, 96 Brick Lane
Leon, 3 Crispin Place, Spitalfields Market
Madhubon Sweets, 42 Brick Lane
Mooshies Vegan Burgers, 104 Brick Lane
Nude Expresso, The Roastery, 25 Hanbury St
E. Pellicci, 332 Bethnal Green Rd
Pepe’s Peri Peri, 82 Brick Lane
Peter’s Cafe, 73 Aldgate High St
Picky Wops Vegan Pizza, 53 Brick Lane
Quaker St Cafe, 10 Quaker St
Rajmahal Sweets, 57 Brick Lane
Rosa’s Thai Cafe, 12 Hanbury St
Shawarma Lebanese, 84 Brick Lane
Shoreditch Fish & Chips, 117 Redchurch St
Sichuan Folk, 32 Hanbury St
String Ray Globe Cafe, 109 Columbia Road
Sushi Show, 136 Bethnal Green Rd
Vegan Yes, Italian & Thai Fusion, 64 Brick Lane
White Horse Kebab, 336 Bethnal Green Rd
Yuriko Sushi & Bento, 48 Brick Lane
OTHER SHOPS & SERVICES
Boots the Chemist, 200 Bishopsgate
Brick Lane Bookshop, 166 Brick Lane (Books ordered by phone or email are delivered free locally)
Brick Lane Bikes, 118 Bethnal Green Rd
Brick Lane Off Licence, 114/116 Brick Lane
Day Lewis Pharmacy, 14 Old Montague St
E1 Cycles, 4 Commercial St
Eden Floral Designs, 10 Wentworth St (Order fresh flowers online for free delivery)
Flashback Records, 131 Bethnal Green Rd (Order records online for delivery)
Harry Brand, 122 Columbia Road (Order gifts online for delivery)
Hussain Tailoring, 64 Hanbury St
iRepair, Phones & Computer, 94 Whitechapel High St
GH Cityprint, 58-60 Middlesex St
Leyland Hardware, 2-4 Great Eastern St
Mobile Clinic & Laptop Repairs, 7 Osborne St
Post Office, 160a Brick Lane
Quality Dry Clean, 151 Bethnal Green Rd
Rose Locksmith & DIY, 149 Bethnal Green Rd
Sid’s DIY, 2 Commercial St
Spitalfields Dry Cleaners, 12 Whites Row
ELSEWHERE
E5 Bakehouse, Arch 395, Mentmore Terrace (Customers are encouraged to order online and collect in person)
Gold Star Dry Cleaning & Laundry, 330 Burdett Rd
Hackney Essentials, 235 Victoria Park Rd
Quality Dry Cleaners, 16a White Church Lane
Newham Books, 747 Barking Rd (Books ordered by phone or email are posted out)
Region Choice Chemist, 68 Cambridge Heath Rd
Symposium Italian Restaurant, 363 Roman Road (Take away service available)
Thompsons DIY, 442-444 Roman Rd
Photographs copyright © Estate of Tony Hall
You may like to take a look at these other photos by Tony Hall
Remembering The 43 Group
Photographer Stuart Freedman introduces his fine portraits of the last surviving members of the 43 Group, brave men who fought back against the resurgence of fascism in post-war London. Next month sees the seventh anniversary of when the Group officially disbanded.
Jules Konopinsky
“When I was a boy, I used to walk down Brick Lane with my father on a Sunday. We would sometimes see men selling the National Front’s rag on the corner of Bethnal Green Rd beneath a tatty Union Jack flag. This was the seventies, a troubled time when the certainties of the post-war settlement were under threat. This was the time of Rock Against Racism and the murder of Blair Peach, where racism, nationalism and bigotry were presented in some quarters as appealing and even respectable. How times do not change.
But each generation remembers its own battles. In the nineties I became a photographer and, for a very short time, I started to make images of the ‘Lane and inevitably saw the same men selling the same newspapers under the same tatty flag.
In 1996, I made a set of portraits and interviews for the Independent Magazine of veterans of the International Brigades who had fought fascists in Spain sixty years before. Many had to go and fight the same battles again across the world in 1939. A few talked about the resurgence of fascism after the war and how, when interned Blackshirts were released from prison they started to organise, prompting a far-right revival.
It was then I read Maurice Beckman’s book about the 43 Group, a historically significant but largely forgotten organisation of mostly – but not exclusively – Jewish ex-servicemen, and some extraordinarily brave women, who returned from the horrors of war only to find fascism again on their own doorstep. I read how they resolved to fight back, to physically oppose the menace, to meet violence with violence to protect their communities. And how they had done so against the wishes of their elders and representatives.
My father lived in a poor, bomb-damaged street in Stoke Newington and, as a young man in 1947, had seen the savage violence of the long-forgotten battles of Dalston and Ridley Rd. Battles unremembered but perhaps no less significant than Cable St. I had resolved to find those men that had stood up to a new generation of Oswald Mosley’s thugs and record them for posterity. But I never did, I spent the next two decades working and living across the world as a photo-reporter. I forgot.
Last year, I read Daniel Sonabend’s wonderful, forensic and compelling new history of the 43 Group, We Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and Their Forgotten Battle for Post-War Britain and I knew that I needed to make these images to remember before it was too late.
By the turn of this year, there were only six of the original members left. I photographed them just before lockdown. Tragically, Maurice Podro passed away earlier this month and so these images are shown in his memory.
We forget at our cost.”
Stuart Freedman
Gerry Kaffin
Martin White
Gerry Abrahams
Maurice Podro
Harry Kaufman
Portraits copyright © Stuart Freedman
You may also like to take a look at Stuart Freedman’s other work
At Kirby’s Eccentric Museum
Whenever I used to visit collector Mike Henbrey, he always showed me something extraordinary from his collection and he certainly did not disappoint when he pulled two volumes of Kirby’s Eccentric Museum from the shelf for me to take a look
John Biggs was born in 1629 and lived in Denton in the county of Bucks in a cave
This wonderful boy, who in early age outstripped all former calculators, was born in Morton Hampstead on 14th June 1806
In Mme Lefort the sexes are so equally blended that it is impossible to say which has predominance
This gentleman was a bookseller in Upper Marylebone St, remembered today as Shelley’s bookseller
The parachute here represented was used by Monsieur Garnerin at his ascension in London
Thomas Cooke was born in 1726 at Clewer near Windsor as the son of an itinerant fiddler
Robert Coates Esq, commonly called ‘The Amateur of Fashion’
The giant Basilio Huaylas came in May 1792 from the town of Joa to Lima and publicly exhibited himself
Mr James Toller and Mr Simon Paap are presumed to be the tallest shortest men in the kingdom
Miss McAvoy, who distinguished colours by the touch, was born in Liverpool on 28th June 1800
Mr Hermans Bras, designated the gigantic Prussian Youth, was born at Tecklenbourg in 1801
Thomas Laugher, aged 111 years, and known by the name of Old Tommy
Petratsch Zortan in the 185th year of his age, he died on 5th January 1724
John Rovin in the 172nd & Sarah his wife in the 164th year of their respective ages
The turnip represented in the plate grew in 1628
The parsnip here represented grew in 1742
The radish here represented was found in 1557 in Haarlem
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Mike Henbrey, Collector of Books, Epherema & Tools
Vinegar Valentines for Bad Tradesmen
