Bethnal Green Mulberry Lecture
This week designer Jill Wilson installed her wonderful model of the Bethnal Green Mulberry in the window of Townhouse, Fournier St, for the Chelsea Flower Show Festival Fringe, promoting our campaign to stop developers digging up the oldest tree in the East End. We believe the Bethnal Green Mulberry is over four hundred years old – planted by Bishop Bonner, a Tudor Bishop of London, in the sixteenth century.
Next Wednesday 22nd May at 6:30pm, I shall be giving a lecture at Townhouse telling the story of the Bethnal Green Mulberry, its culture, history and the battle to save it. (Click here for free tickets)
I am delighted to report that our solicitor has confirmed we have grounds to call a Judicial Review at the High Court, challenging Tower Hamlets Council’s decision last September to give their consent to Crest Nicholson’s overblown housing scheme for the former London Chest Hospital next to Victoria Park, which involves digging up the Bethnal Green Mulberry.
This decision was taken in spite of the Tree Protection Order, the Mulberry’s designation as a Veteran Tree and the additional protection extended to such trees in the government’s revised planning policy guidelines last July.
We are very grateful to all of you who contributed £6,118 that we have raised so far for our legal fund to save the Bethnal Green Mulberry. At this moment, we need to find another £1,077 to pay a barrister who will take the case to the High Court and we ask your help to raise this sum.
CLICK TO CONTRIBUTE TO OUR FUND TO SAVE THE BETHNAL GREEN MULBERRY
Jill Wilson installs her magnificent creation
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Graphic by Paul Bommer
Click here to read my feature in The Daily Telegraph about the scandal of the Bethnal Green Mulberry
Read more about the Bethnal Green Mulberry
Hope for The Bethnal Green Mulberry
The Fate of the Bethnal Green Mulberry
How Old is the Bethnal Green Mulberry?
Here We Go Round The Bethnal Green Mulberry
The Long Night Of The Phone Booths
William Taylor introduces Marcus Duran‘s fascinating photography of nocturnal phone booths
020 7702 3424, Aldgate 2019
Occupied, Aldgate 2019
The City of London may be the richest Square Mile in the world and mostly comprising office blocks, but the people who actually live there still need their rubbish cleared and their children educated. When I was a councillor in Portsoken ward in Aldgate, I was asked to assist residents with a whole motley of matters.
Sometimes I could help, but sometimes I could not. I was most likely to be effective where the request for help involved a combination of three factors. First, if it was possible to isolate the cause of the problem. Second, if everyone wanted the same outcome and was prepared to act together to achieve it. And third, if I knew who to talk to about it.
The Aldgate phone booth above in Marcus Duran’s photographic series of the disappearing KX100 BT booths is a case in point. The flats in the background behind the wall along Mansell St were in my ward and a number of the residents asked if I could help get rid of the booth in the photograph. I would say this particular request met two of my three criteria.
Maybe not everyone hated it, but no-one from the estate ever actually used it. In fact, the only people who used it were those calling in for a chemical fix in the middle of the night, turning the nicotine light of the phone box blue with toxic agitation and, typically, also waking up the entire neighbourhood.
In the second photograph, a woman is burying her head into the receiver, her knees flexing as she leans into the bargain she is striking. You can see her midriff revealed but you cannot see her face. The lights of passing traffic are traced across the image like road markings that have drifted from the highway, as though the camera itself is under the influence of an hallucinogen. Speed may be in the air but the body of the person in the phone booth is inert and collapsing. It is both a compelling and a sad image.
Marcus Duran’s photographs of the 1985 KX100 phone booths from Whitechapel to Wembley evoke the solitary world of backstreet London at night. There is in some an indication of the seasons. In one, the shadow of a tree falls across the pavement and, in another, snow has all but melted. Yet the overall effect is artificial and lunar – the booths possess an extra-terrestrial quality, as if they just materialised
One reason Marcus Duran photographed these booths is because they are about to disappear. Superseded by the ubiquitous mobile phone, they have become redundant and BT wants to get rid of them. They are a manifestation of the moment when BT re-launched itself after the privatisation of 1984. In the eighties, speed was definitely in the air as our economy became cybernetic. Stranded between the disappearing world of public subsidy and the new world of highly-leveraged private profit, the KX100 phone booth was a harbinger of this transformation, rendering the red phone box obsolete.
This was not the reason my constituents asked me to help get rid of the booth on Mansell St but, since they were certainly united in their request, I gave it a go. However when I tried to speak with someone was responsible, I was put through to BT’s Customer Services and provided with hypnotic music. It may be good to talk but it is not great to be put indefinitely on hold and, soon enough, I gave up. Yet I suspect that a modernising purge will accomplish what my feeble intervention never managed and sweep them all away before too long.
Disconnected & deleted # 1, Commercial Rd, February 2017
020 7702942, Bermondsey 2017
Disconnected & deleted # 2, Harrow 2019
Disconnected & deleted # 3, Finchley 2018
020 8986 4037, Hackney Central 2019
020 8902 4594, Wembley 2017
020 7247 9369, Underwood Rd, Whitechapel 2018
Disconnected & deleted # 4, Essex Rd, Islington 2017
020 8902 4594, Wembley 2017
Photographs copyright © Marcus Duran
Marcus Duran’s exhibition NOCTURNAL CALLING runs at the Dialogue Cafe, 130 Upper Clapton Rd, E5 9JY until the end of June
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Leo Epstein Of Epra Fabrics
When the genial Leo Epstein, proprietor of Epra Fabrics says, “I am the last Jewish trader on Brick Lane,” he says it with such a modest balanced tone that you know he is stating a fact and not venturing a comment. “If you’re not a tolerant sort of person you wouldn’t be in Brick Lane,” he adds before scooting across the road to ask his neighbour at the Islamic shop to turn down the Friday prayer just a little. “I told him he can have it as loud as he wants after one o’clock when I’ve gone home.” he explains cheerily on his return – now we can hear ourselves think. “We all get on very well,” he confirms,”As one of my Bengali neighbours said to me, ‘On Brick Lane, we do business not politics.'”
While his son Daniel was in Israel, Leo was running the shop single-handedly, yet he managed – with the ease and grace of over sixty years experience – to maintain the following monologue whilst serving a string of customers, cutting bolts of fabric, answering the endless phone calls and arranging a taxi to collect an order of ten rolls of velvet.
“I started in 1956, when I got married. I used to work for a company of fabric wholesalers and one of our customers on Brick Lane said, “There’s a shop to let on the corner, why don’t you take it?” The rent was £6.50 a week and I used to lie awake at night thinking, “Where am I going to find it?” You could live on £10 a week then. My partner was Rajchman and initially we couldn’t decide which name should come first, combining the first two letters of our names, but then we realised that “Raep” Fabrics was not a good trade name and so we became “Epra” Fabrics.
In no time, we expanded and moved to this place where we are today. In those days, it was the thing to go into, the fabric trade – the City was a closed shop to Jewish people. My father thought that anything to do with rebuilding would be a good trade for me after the war and so I studied Structural Engineering but all the other students were rich children of developers. They drove around in new cars while I was the poor student who could barely afford my bus fare. So I said to my father, “I’m not going to do this.” And the openings were in the shmutter trade, I didn’t ever see myself working in an office. And I’ve always been happy, I like the business. I like the social part.
In just a few years, the first Indians came to the area, it’s always been a changing neighbourhood.The first to come were the Sikhs in their turbans, and each group that came brought their trades with them. The Sikhs were the first to print electronic circuits and they had contacts in the Far East, they brought the first calculators. And then came the Pakistanis, the brought the leather trade with them. And the Bengalis came and they were much poorer than the others. They came on their own, as single men, at first. The head of the family, the father would come to earn the money to send for the rest of the family. And since they didn’t have women with them, they opened up canteens to feed themselves and then it became trendy for City gents to come and eat curry here and that was the origin of the curry restaurants that fill Brick Lane today.
Slowly all the Jewish people moved away and all their businesses closed down. Twenty years ago, Brick Lane was a run down inner city area, people didn’t feel safe – and it still has that image even though it’s a perfectly safe place to be. I’ve always like it here.”
At any time over the last half a century, you could have walked up Fashion St, crossed Brick Lane and entered Epra Fabrics where you would have been greeted by Leo, saying “Good morning! May I help you?’ with respect and civility, just as he does today. After all these years, it is no exaggeration when he says, “Everyone knows me as Leo.” A tall yet slight man, always formally dressed with a kippa, he hovers at the cash desk, standing sentinel with a view through the door and West along Fashion St to the towers of the City. Here you will find an unrivalled selection of silks and satins. “This is Brick Lane not Park Lane,” is one of Leo’s favourite sayings, indicating that nothing costs more than a couple of pounds a metre. “We only like to take care of the ladies,” is another, indicating the nature of the stock, which is strong in dress fabrics.
“I lived through the war here, so the attack wasn’t really that big a deal,” he says with a shrug, commenting on the Brick Lane nail bomb of 1999 laid by the racist David Copeland, which blew out the front of his shop, “Luckily nobody was seriously hurt because on a Saturday everything is closed round here, it’s a tradition going back to when it was a Jewish area, where everything would close for the Sabbath.”
“Many of the Asian shop owners come in from time to time and say,’Oh good, you’re still here! Why don’t you come and have a meal on us?’ You can’t exist if you don’t get on with everybody else. It was, in a way, a weirdly pleasant time to see how everyone pulled together,” he concludes dryly, revealing how shared experiences brought him solidarity with his neighbours. Leo Epstein is the last working representative of the time when Brick Lane and Wentworth St was a Jewish ghetto and the heart of the shmutter trade, but he also exemplifies the best of the egalitarian spirit that exists in Brick Lane today, defining it as a place where different peoples co-exist peacefully.
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The Soup Kitchens Of Spitalfields
Today Philip Carstairs traces the history of Spitalfields through its soup kitchens and, if this leaves you hungry for more, he will be speaking about soup kitchens at London Metropolitan Archives at 2:30pm on Tuesday May 21st (Click here for tickets)
This feature is complemented by Stuart Freedman‘s photographs taken at the Jewish Soup Kitchen in Brune St, Spitalfields, in 1990
Jewish Soup Kitchen 1902, 17-19 Brune St
Huguenot Soup Kitchen 1797, 115 Brick Lane
You cannot write a history of Spitalfields without describing its soup kitchens, nor can you write a history of soup kitchens without discussing Spitalfields. The relationship between the two is deeply entwined and both their stories are complex and interesting. The history of these kitchens encapsulates the changes in this place since the seventeenth century.
Spitalfields still has two buildings that once housed soup kitchens. The Spitalfields Soup Society functioned on Brick Lane from the late-eighteenth century and the London Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor operated on Brune Street from 1902. Both these institutions were deeply embedded in the community and have long histories.
However these were not the first soup kitchens in Spitalfields. Soon after Huguenot refugees settled in the second half of the seventeenth century, they set up La Soupe. Although soup had been used charitably almost since it was invented, this was the first institution in England set up to serve soup. One reason for providing soup rather than money was that benefactors repeatedly claimed beneficiaries “wickedly disposed of the money in tobacco and brandy.” Thus the “advantage” of soup was that it was hard to trade or sell. Additionally, La Soupe carried out careful casework before issuing soup, investigating the circumstances of each applicant to ensure they really deserved the help.
Between 1689 and 1826 when it closed, La Soupe moved several times, yet always in the vicinity of the Spitalfields market. After 1741, it seems to have stopped providing soup and distributed bread and meat instead. At the same time, local residents weew also providing soup to the less well-off. Newspapers in 1767 reported that “a gentleman” was giving soup to more than fifty Spitalfields poor from his house and John Gray, a Quaker journeyman pewterer, is recorded as regularly taking soup to his neighbours in the late-eighteenth century. Extreme poverty grew commonplace when the silk industry entered its long decline and the Society of Friends was at the forefront of the local philanthropy.
The late 1790s were times of great hardship for the poor across Britainas the Napoleonic wars, recession and high food prices brought famine. In Spitalfields, the silk industry was hit by falling demand and competition from smuggled silk. This great distress prompted two friends, William Phillips and William Allen, to organise a soup charity which became the best known soup kitchen in the country. Others sought its advice or bought the manuals it published. Its relationship to La Soupe is unclear. William Allen grew up in Spitalfields on Steward St where his father, Job Allen, was a silk weaver. So William must have known of La Soupe’s existence and history, although it is never mentioned in the surviving documents.
The “Society for supplying the Poor with a good and nutritious Meat Soup established in Spitalfields in 1797,” as its minute book proudly proclaims, was set up in late 1797, yet did not start supplying soup until the following January. When advertising in the press, they wisely shortened its name to the “Spitalfields Soup Society.” It seems to have operated until the early twentieth century as a soup kitchen and was still in existence as a charity in the sixties.
Although almost none of the founding committee were Spitalfields residents or associated with the silk trade (Allen was a chemist of distinction and Phillips a printer) the soup kitchen responded to the ups and downs of the silk industry throughout the ensuing century, opening when downturns threw thousands out of work and closing when times improved again. The list of committee members and donors was a catalogue of the City’s burgeoning banking and insurance sector, with Barclays, Hoares, Gurneys and others digging deep in their pockets. The partners in the Truman & Hanbury Brewery became the principal organisers until handing over control to the Rector of Christ Church in 1883.
The soup house ( the term “soup kitchen” was not widely used until the mid-nineteenth century) always remained at the same address, although the building was reorganised at some point before the 1860s when the famous print below from the Illustrated London News of the soup kitchen was engraved. As the picture shows, the soup kitchen, located behind the shops on the street frontage, was always busy when open. For six days a week, it served beef soup between 2,000 and 4,000 people from Spitalfields and neighbouring parishes.
The other principal soup kitchen in the neighbourhood was the London Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor. This started life in 1800 in the corner of Duke’s Place, Aldgate near the Great Synagogue, but closed around 1802. The Jewish soup kitchen was refounded in 1854 in Whitechapel when immigration from Eastern Europe increased significantly and moved north to Fashion Street in 1866 as the Jewish community expanded northward.
By the 1890s, the increasing number of Jewish refugees meant that these premises, squeezed into a stable yard, were no longer viable and – as is ever the case in Spitalfields – they were to be redeveloped. So the charity raised £10,000 to build the Brune Street premises which opened in 1902. Here several thousand received soup and bread every day. This fine building was a strong statement that the Jewish community would look after its poor and it only ceased operations after the Second World War.
There have been several other soup kitchens in the area. In around 1795, five ordinaries (an ordinary was the equivalent of a café) in Spitalfields were paid by a charitable subscription raised in the City to provide half-price soup to the poor (there were a further sixteen ordinaries selling subsidised soup in Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Whitechapel). Two of the Spitalfields ordinaries were on Brick Lane, one at either end, and the others were on Fashion Street, Lamb Street and Smock Alley (now Artillery Passage). The Smock Alley building is now occupied by Ottolenghi’s Restaurant. The proprietor of this ordinary, George Franklin, continued providing soup to the local poor for twenty years. Another large soup kitchen operated between 1847 and about 1855 at St Matthias’ Chapel on St John Street (now under the railway).
This significant element of the Spitalfields history has been largely forgotten and the documents lost or scattered. Yet, even piecing together the story from remaining fragments, it is clear that these charities and individuals provided an invaluable service in supplying sustenance to a significant proportion of the population when no other form of welfare was available.
The Jewish Soup Kitchen in Fashion St, 1867 (Illustrated London News)
The Jewish Soup Kitchen in Spitalfields, 1879 (Illustrated London News)
The Jewish Soup Kitchen in Spitalfields, 1990, photographed by Stuart Freedman
Groceries awaiting collection
A volunteer offers a second hand coat to an old lady
An old woman collects her grocery allowance
A volunteer distributes donated groceries
View from behind the hatch
A couple await their food parcel
An ex-boxer arrives to collect his weekly rations
An old boxer’s portrait, taken while waiting to collect his groceries
An elderly man leaves the soup kitchen with his supplies
Photographs copyright © Stuart Freedman
Archive images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Philip Marriage In Spitalfields
On the corner of Gun St & Brushfield St, 1967
In Spitalfields, the closure of the Truman Brewery in 1989, the moving of Fruit & Vegetable Market in 1991 and the subsequent redevelopment of the site in 2002, have changed our neighbourhood so rapidly that even the recent past – of the time before these events – appears now as the distant past. Time has mysteriously accelerated, and we look back from the other side of the watershed created by these major changes to a familiar world that has been rendered strange to us.
Such was my immediate reaction, casting my eyes over Philip Marriage’s photographs. Between 1967 and 1995, Philip visited Spitalfields regularly taking photographs, after discovering that his ancestors lived here centuries ago. And the pictures which are the outcome of his thirty-year fascination comprise a spell-binding record of these streets at that time, taken by one on a personal quest to seek the spirit of the place.
“I worked in London from 1959 to 1978 and, for the first ten years, I commuted from Enfield to Liverpool St Station. So I was aware of Spitalfields from that time, though my real interest started when I discovered that my great-great-grandfather was a silk weaver at 6 Duke St, Old Artillery Ground. And I found records of others sharing the Marriage (then French Mariage) surname in the area as far back as 1585.
My job – as a graphic designer and later Design Manager – for HMSO Books (the former government publishers) was based on Holborn Viaduct so I was near enough to Somerset House, the Public Records Office and the Guildhall Library to undertake family history research in my lunchtime. In the autumn of 1967, I visited Spitalfields with my camera for the first time to see if I could locate any of the places associated with my family. In those days colour print film was expensive and I mostly took transparencies, but later Ilford brought out a cheap colour film for a pound a roll which provided twenty small colour prints and each negative returned mounted in 2×2 cardboard mounts – quite novel, but affordable.
When I married in 1968 and moved to Hertfordshire, my family history researches came to an end. Then, in 1978, my job took me to Norwich where I’ve remained since. However, I occasionally found myself in London and, if time permitted whilst waiting for the Norwich train, I always nipped out of Liverpool St Station and down Brushfield St for a brief reminder of my favourite places.”
Crispin St, 1985.
Spital shop, 1970.
Parliament Ct, 1986.
H.Hyams, Gun St, 1970.
Corner of Fashion St & Brick Lane, 1979.
Fashion St, 1979.
Toynbee St, 1970.
The Jolly Butchers, Brick Lane, 1985.
The Crown & Shuttle, Norton Folgate, 1987.
Boundary Passage with The Ship & Blue Ball, 1985.
The Carpenter’s Arms at the corner of Cheshire St & St Matthew’s Row, 1985.
Brick Lane, 1985.
Tour in Hanbury St, 1985.
Corner of Wentworth St & Leyden St, 1990.
Brushfield St, 1990.
Mosley Speaks, 1967.
Fournier St, 1985.
Corner of Quaker St & Grey Eagle St, 1986.
Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, 1985.
E. Olive Ltd, Umbrella Manufacturers, Hanbury St, 1985.
E. Olive Ltd, Umbrella Manufacturers, Hanbury St, 1985.
Corner of Lamb St & Commercial St, 1988.
Brushfield St, 1990.
Spitalfields Market, 1986.
Brushfield St, 1985.
Gun St, 1985.
Brushfield St, 1985.
Christ Church, Spitalfields, 1985.
Photographs copyright © Philip Marriage
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Alan Dein’s East End Shopfronts of 1988
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Dave Thompson, Joiner
In Spitalfields, Dave Thompson is famous for the blue overalls he has worn as long as anyone can remember, popular for the apples and eggs he brings up fresh from Kent each day, but – most of all – he is celebrated for his superlative joinery.
Over the last fifteen years, Dave has been at the core of a group of craftsmen who have worked continuously upon the renovation of the eighteenth century houses and, as a result, he has earned the affections of many of the owners. They treasure Dave for the skill and application he brings to his work, yet such is his magnanimous nature that he chooses to reciprocate their appreciation of his talent with regular deliveries of apples and eggs. Thus it has come to be understood, among those who dwell in the ancient streets beside Christ Church, that only when you are in receipt of Dave’s deliveries from Kent can you truly be said to have arrived in Spitalfields.
To seek Dave, you have to look in a special place secluded from the public gaze and known only to the initiated. On the Eastern side of Brick Lane lies part of the Truman Brewery once inhabited by dray horses and coopers, here in an old cobbled yard stands a crumbling stable block where at its furthest extremity, framed by an elegant brick arch, you will find Dave’s workshop. Any residual doubt whether this is the correct location will be assuaged by the presence of the massive pile of scrap timber you see tossed to the right of the arch.
Yet, by the time you reach the woodpile, you will very likely already have heard the sound of Dave’s machine tools roaring within his workshop, and you will know that this is the place and Dave is inside at work. Certainly, this was my experience when I arrived and opened the door to be greeted by Dave’s smile, his blue overalls standing out in sharp contrast to the yellow wood shavings and sawdust that surrounded him.
I come from a little village, Loose near Maidstone in Kent. At school, I learnt what I could do and I started off in furniture making at Maidstone Art College where I did City & Guilds Carpentry and Joinery, basic and advanced. Then I worked as a cabinet maker in a furniture factory for eight years, making fireside chairs and stuff like that, and I worked in East Farleigh making bespoke kitchens. I was lucky to get the chance to come to London but it was a big gamble – I was offered the choice of being made redundant and getting five thousand pounds, so I took it.
When I first came up to Spitalfields fifteen years ago, I was restoring 1 and 3 Fournier St for James Hutcheson. He had a showroom at the front and I had my workshop at the back, but after three years he sold number 3 to Marianna Kennedy & Charles Gledhill, and I worked for them. That was six years of my life, then I moved over to the Truman Brewery stable block. I knew nothing about the restoration of old buildings when I first come up here but I learnt a lot working with Jim Howett, he’s been here thirty years and he’s got a lot of specialist knowledge.
If you can do something like mouldings, everybody wants you to make them because in every old house the mouldings are different. One of my specialities is fitting shutters in rooms that don’t have shutter cases and making new panelling. I’ve done a lot of external shutters in Wilkes St and Princelet St. When you do restoration, you try to use the old timber. Often if the panelling is damaged, you can patch it up and put it back. It was all good work they did in the old days. They didn’t have the tools but they had all the time in the world. I’ve never had to look for work, I’ve been up here so long now that people just come to me – but it’s been hard, for years I got up at four thirty every morning to get into London by six.
In Eleanor Jones’ house in Fournier St, I put in a big pair of curved doors on the first floor that are the same as on the ground floor. I had a lot of curved work to do the bay window and Bogdan helped me, he was a very good joiner from Poland. The two of us put our heads together and sorted that out. One day, he came in and said he’d been to the specialist. It was cancer. He’d had his chips. He did quite a lot of work around here and extensively renovated the Market Coffee House. He was one of the best.
Since then, I’ve done a lot of work for people in Fournier St. When I started, I used to fit shutters, internal and external, but most of the time now, I’m doing work for people making joinery for their carpenters to fit on site. As you get older and wiser, you don’t fit it, you make it and leave that to someone else. Matt Whittle and Tony Clarence are two blokes I work with, we started at the same time fifteen years ago. There was quite a little gang of people and we all got to know each other and we’d be working together restoring the same houses. Sometimes, the people would sell the houses, and we’d get paid to rip out the work we did and then do it all over again to suit the new owner.
About three years ago, I had a quadruple heart bypass. I used to work quite long hours but now all I do is get in at six and work until three, four days a week. Not so stressful. I’ve got an old farm cottage in Loose. Unfortunately, it’s only a two bedroom cottage. I restored it myself and I like to be comfortable. I’m sixty-five in April, I don’t think I’ve got many more years – though it is getting to the stage in Spitalfields where there is less and less to do. But I’ve left my mark and I’m proud of the work I’ve done here.”
One day – to his alarm – Dave saw that some contractors had tried to cut corners by tearing an eighteenth century door case off the front of a house in Wilkes St and throwing it in a skip. Yet thankfully, when the building inspectors enforced the listed status of the building, it was Dave who got the painstaking job to piece the fragments back together and reconstruct it with the help of Diana Reynell (a grotto designer) who restored the mouldings. And the dignified door case in question stands today, as if it had never been broken.
The emotionalism with which this event is charged for Dave reveals the depth of his personal involvement with these old houses. His conscientious labour over all these years has comprised the culmination of his life’s work and it honours those craftsmen whose work he has furthered.
Even as Dave and his fellows have pursued the long task of restoring these buildings, residents have come and gone, raising the question of who – if anybody – truly has ownership of these properties. Because, as much as these buildings manifest the status and taste of their occupants, they also commemorate the talents of the artisans who have worked upon them, both recently and long ago.
Dave worked on the restoration of 1 Fournier St in the nineteen-nineties
Fragments of the eighteenth century doorcase torn from the wall but rescued from the skip in Wilkes St
The eighteenth century doorbox re-instated by Dave at number 13 Wilkes St and replicated at number 1
Doorboxes at 7 & 9 Fournier St by Dave, commissioned by neighbours John Nicolson and Kate Jenkins
Dave Thompson, joiner, outside his workshop in the former stable of the Truman Brewery
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Michelle Mason’s Flower Market
As you know, I always go to Columbia Rd Market each Sunday to buy a bunch of flowers. And I often pop in to visit Michelle Mason who has been running a shop there for several years and complements her displays with flowers from the market.
Growing fascinated by the changing varieties through the seasons of the year, Michelle began photographing her arrangements and now she has written a beautiful book, FLOWER MARKET, Botanical Style At Home, which is full of inspiration to create your own imaginative floral displays.
Michelle will be demonstrating how it is done at Townhouse Spitalfields on Tuesday 21st May at 6:30pm as past of the Chelsea Flower Show Festival Fringe. Click here for tickets
“Summer show-stoppers include blowsy Peonies, Roses, Foxgloves and Lupins and as the season unfurls through the warmer months of June, July and August the variety of flowers and foliage reaches its most glorious peak. This is, no doubt, the most productive and creative time for growers and florists as they prepare for summer weddings and other events.”
“I love the scent of early summer Stocks and the gorgeous apricot variety I used here filled the entire room with a sweet clove-like fragrance. Using an old glass jar I added white Anenomes, coral pink Freesia, zesty Ranunculus and a peach tea Rose for a romantic garden feel and set it against a botanical wall chart with illustrations of Sweet Peas. This scene was inspired by flower paintings from the Dutch Golden Age of the late 1600s, when still-life paintings depicting exotic botanicals became popular.”
“As we reach May and June, the flower market comes alive with colour and variety, ranging from Peonies the size of saucers to Roses in every shape and shade, exotic oriental Poppies, Delphiniums, Cornflowers, Phlox, pear-scented Snapdragons and so many dainty and delicate meadow flowers such as Forget-me-Nots, Fennel and Mustard flowers. The choice is overwhelming.”
“This botanical illustration from the twenties sets the tone for a delicately faded scene. The caramel-coloured Rose was the starting point for the flowers and I added the fragrant cream double Daffodils with a buttery yellow centre, aptly named ‘Cheerfulness’, with Hazel twigs, white Freesia and pearly butterfly Ranunculus.”
“This palette of spring colour, randomly arranged on a metal table, includes soft pink Primroses, Tulips, Grape Hyacinths, orange Ranunculus, yellow and blue Hyacinths, cream Freesia, Snowdrops and white Wax Flower.”
“Using old fabrics is a way to layer pattern and colour, and I especially like to use hessian, hemp and plain linens to add tone and texture, such as this sugar sack. The worn, faded cloth, stamped with Tate & Lyle, makes an attractive backdrop to the pale floral arrangement of white Lilac, Tulips with honey-coloured centres, cream Narcissi and palest pink Viburnum.”
“Winter displays need not be limited to evergreens and dried leaves. November offers colour like these caramel-coloured Ranunculus, Anemones and rosy apricot, peach and yellow late-flowering Iceland Poppies.”
“Beautiful, sweet-smelling Peonies are the quintessential summer blooms. They range from the ruffle- feathered pink blush variety ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ to the deep burgundy ‘Rubra Plena’ and the white ‘Alba Plena’, all of which have large velvety double flowers. ‘Coral Sunset’, a little less full-flowered but equally pretty, with a gold and apricot centre, reminds me of my grandmother’s garden.”
” In April and May the larger peony-like, fuller-flowered tulip varieties come on to the market in a blaze of colour from scorching hot reds to ballet-slipper pinks, yellows and ivory streaked with peach. ”
“Traditional flowers such as Forget-me-Nots, trailing Honeysuckle, wild sweet Briar, Lily-of-the-Valley (symbolising happiness), Lupins, Larkspur and Foxgloves make dreamy summer bouquets and add unusual elements to wedding flowers.”
“Little posies of peony Ranunculus, pink Viburnum blossom and Ammi Majus (a form of cow parsley sometimes known as Bishop’s Flower) in a collection of glassware from cloudy eau de vie bottles, chemists’ bottles, inkpots and an old jam jar.”
Photographs copyright © Michelle Mason
Click here to buy a copy of FLOWER MARKET by Michelle Mason direct from Pimpernel Press
Other CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW FRINGE EVENTS at Townhouse
BEE URBAN, between 2:30-4:30pm Saturday 18th May
The beekeepers who tend the bees on the roof of the National Theatre and the South Bank Centre will be displaying a mobile observation beehive. (No booking necessary)
THE BETHNAL GREEN MULBERRY, 6:30pm Wednesday 22d May
The Gentle Author tells the story of the campaign to save the East End’s oldest tree. (Click here to book)
EDIBLE LANDSCAPES, 12:30pm Thursday 23rd May
Jo Honan talks about how to identify edible plants and trees, including, lovage, saltbush, jostaberry, medlar, calendala and allium. Lecture includes a light lunch of edible plants. (Click here to book)
