Mia Sabel, Saddler
“My grandfather George Dobson was a Master Carpenter & Cabinet Maker, he taught me how to turn bannisters and make joints when I was a child, Mia Sabel the Saddler admitted to me, “and my mother taught me how to sew with a sewing machine too – so I was always quite proficient at making things.”
Just a short ride from Liverpool St Station delivered me to Walthamstow and a short walk from the station took me to the modest terrace where Mia works. Through a side gate, I entered the large garden where a log cabin with a wood-burning stove, surrounded by raised vegetable beds, provided the ideal location for an urban saddlery. Here in this enclave of peace Mia sat in the winter sunlight, illuminated like a woman painted by Vermeer, yet cutting and stitching leather with the skill of a Master Saddler.
It was an extraordinary discovery in the modern world, although equally a phenomenon of our times – since Mia used to work in the corporate financial sector and take the trip down to Liverpool St Station, until she set out to redirect her life towards independence by acquiring manual skills. Mia’s example fascinates me as the inverse of the familiar pattern in the East End where, through successive generations, traditional skills have been lost as the notion of a white collar desk job won precedence over working with your hands.
The irony is that Mia is able to complement her ability as a saddler with years of experience in the business world, granting her the acumen to make a living at this ancient trade.
Yet when you see Mia at work, the wonder is her scrupulous attention to technique. Even a humble line of stitching requires the precise choice of punch to make the correct-sized holes for the thread, the selection of the thread itself, the waxing of the thread and then the patience to work simultaneously with two needles and get the stitches perfectly even, and to ease the leather apart so it does not tear – all while holding the leatherwork in an ancient wooden clamp, known as a ‘clam.’ It is a beautiful thing to see such a fundamental task perfectly achieved.
At forty years old, Mia took a year out and worked in a stable while considering her options. “I looked at millinery, tailoring and saddlery,” she confessed to me, ” but I don’t like hats and, as a tailor, I realised I’d end up sewing in a basement, but there was a full-time course in saddlery ten miles from here in Enfield.”
“It was very physical and hard, it was for sixteen year olds. Quite a lot of the girls came from a horsey background whereas I am in a suburb with not a lot of horses around me,” Mia explained, looking up from her work with a grin of recognition, “I understood I couldn’t make a living making saddles, even though I know how to do that, so I’ve learnt to make bespoke luxury leather goods.” The custom watch strap has emerged as Mia’s unique speciality, permitting her the opportunity to make a strap that fits the wearer so precisely it only requires one hole for fastening.
Living in Walthamstow, not so far from William Morris’ house, Mia Sabel has grappled with many of the same issues about the role of the craftsman in the modern world, and developed a personal synthesis of romantic and realistic thinking – pursuing her unlikely course with hard work and flair. “I’m a jack-of-all-trades, I’ve even done shoe repairs,” she revealed to me with characteristic modesty, “Repairs teach you how things are made and I discovered how badly-made expensive bags can be, so I’ve learnt how to iron out those flaws in my own work.”
Mia uses two needles simultaneously on one thread to achieve her scrupulously regular stitches
Mia works with the saddlers’ clams on the right, dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Punching holes for the stitches
Mia’s proud workmanship
Using a wooden clam to grip the leather in place, Mia stitches the strap
Mia Sabel is available for all kinds of leatherwork commissions and restoration work.
You may also like to read about
Billy & Charley’s Shadwell Shams
William Smith & Charles Eaton – better known as Billy & Charley – were a couple of Thames mudlarks who sold artefacts they claimed to have found in the Thames in Shadwell and elsewhere. Yet this threadbare veil of fiction conceals the astonishing resourcefulness and creativity that these two illiterate East Enders demonstrated in designing and casting tens of thousands of cod-medieval trinkets – eventually referred to as “Shadwell Shams” – which had the nineteenth century archaeological establishment running around in circles of confusion and misdirection for decades.
“They were intelligent but without knowledge,” explained collector Philip Mernick, outlining the central mystery of Billy & Charley, “someone told them ‘If you can make these, you can get money for them.’ Yet someone must also have given them the designs, because I find it hard to believe they had the imagination to invent all these – but maybe they did?”
Working in Rosemary Lane, significantly placed close to the Royal Mint, Billy & Charley operated in an area where small workshops casting maritime fixtures and fittings for the docks were common. Between 1856 until 1870, they used lead alloy and cut into plaster of paris with nails and knives to create moulds, finishing their counterfeit antiquities with acid to simulate the effects of age. Formerly, they made money as mudlarks selling their Thames discoveries to a dealer, William Edwards, whom Billy first met in 1845. Edwards described Billy & Charley as “his boys” and became their fence, passing on their fakes to George Eastwood, a more established antiques dealer based in the City Rd.
Badges, such as these from Philip Mernick’s collection, were their commonest productions – costing less than tuppence to make, yet selling for half a crown. These items were eagerly acquired in a new market for antiquities among the middle class who had spare cash but not sufficient education to understand what they were buying. Yet many eminent figures were also duped, including the archaeologist, Charles Roach Smith, who was convinced the artefacts were from the sixteenth century, suggesting that they could not be forgeries if there was no original from which they were copied. Similarly, Rev Thomas Hugo, Vicar of St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, took an interest, believing them to be medieval pilgrims’ badges.
The question became a matter for the courts in August 1858 when the dealer George Eastwood sued The Athenaeum for accusing him of selling fakes. Eastwood testified he paid £296 to William Edwards for over a thousand objects that Edwards had originally bought for £200. Speaking both for himself and Charley, Billy Smith – described in the record as a “rough looking man” – assured the court that they had found the items in the Thames and earned £400 from the sale. Without further evidence, the judge returned a verdict of not guilty upon the publisher since Eastwood had not been named explicitly in print.
The publicity generated by the trial proved ideal for the opening of Eastwood’s new shop, moving his business from City Rd to Haymarket in 1859 and enjoying a boost in sales of Billy & Charley’s creations. Yet, two years later, the bottom fell out of the market when a sceptical member of the Society of Antiquaries visited Shadwell Dock and uncovered the truth from a sewer hunter who confirmed Billy & Charley’s covert means of production.
As they were losing credibility, Billy & Charley were becoming more accomplished and ambitious in their works, branching out into more elaborate designs and casting in brass. It led them to travel beyond the capital, in hope of escaping their reputation and selling their wares. They were arrested in Windsor in 1867 but, without sufficient ground for prosecution, they were released. By 1869, their designs could be bought for a penny each.
A year later, Charley died of consumption in a tenement in Wellclose Sq at thirty-five years old. The same year, Billy was forced to admit that he copied the design of a badge from a butter mould – and thus he vanishes from the historical record.
It is a wonder that the archaeological establishment were fooled for so long by Billy & Charley, when their pseudo-medieval designs include Arabic dates that were not used in Europe before the fifteenth century. Maybe the conviction and fluency of their work persuaded the original purchasers of its authenticity? Far from crude or cynical productions, Billy & Charley’s creations possess character, humour and even panache, suggesting they are the outcome of an ingenious delight – one which could even find inspiration for a pilgrim’s badge in a butter mould. Studying these works, it becomes apparent that there is a creative intelligence at work which, in another time, might be celebrated as the talent of an artist or designer, even if in Billy & Charley’s world it found its only outlet in semi-criminal activity.
Yet the final irony lies with Billy & Charley – today their Shadwell Shams are commonly worth more than the genuine antiquities they forged.
You may also like to read about
Doreen Fletcher In Her Own Words
At the opening of Doreen Fletcher’s RETROSPECTIVE, I publish this interview in which Doreen tells her story in her own words.
All are welcome tonight at the Private View of Doreen Fletcher’s RETROSPECTIVE at Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts, Thursday 24th January from 6pm. The exhibition runs until 24th March.
I am IN CONVERSATION WITH DOREEN FLETCHER on Wednesday 30th January 7pm at Nunnery Gallery, showing the paintings and telling the stories. Click here for tickets
Portrait of Doreen Fletcher in her studio by Stuart Freedman
Doreen Fletcher – Looking back, I think I was attracted to painting even from the age of four or five. I loved colour and my dad used to take me to the local toy shop where I always insisted on the best quality paints. I was an only child, born into a working class family, and my parents were – as you might say these days – semi-literate. Consequently, from the age of about eight years old, I took responsibility for helping them out in dealing with officialdom, not unlike – I suppose – immigrant children in the East End today whose parents have limited English.
My mum and dad were very loving, and keen for me to have the opportunities they had missed. When I was five, I was bought a set of encyclopaedias from a salesman selling door-to-door on the never-never. It had colour reproductions of famous paintings such as Constable’s ‘The Hay Wain’ by Constable and Turner’s ‘The Fighting Téméraire’ and I thought they were wonderful.
I passed my eleven-plus exam but I had a very difficult time at grammar school because – although I was clever and always in the top six of the top stream – I came from the wrong side of the tracks. I felt I had to pretend I was from somewhere else, because most of the pupils came from professional middle-class families. Consequently, I could not invite school friends to our tiny terraced home. I did not speak with the right accent, have the social ease of the other children or possess their cultural knowledge.
The art room was a refuge for me because there I could express myself fluently under the expert tutelage of the art teacher Mr Hanford. He had trained at the Royal Academy School and was probably the only teacher of any influence I ever listened to. I loved Fridays when there was a two hour after-school art club. It was at one of these sessions that Mr Hanford advised against using black paint straight from the tube. To this day, I mix ultramarine and burnt umber for a warm black and raw umber and indigo for a cool black.
The Gentle Author – What work did your parents do?
Doreen Fletcher – Alice, my mother, worked in a munitions factory during the war and then became a domestic servant afterwards. It gave her ideas about not putting the newspaper or ketchup bottle on the table and she adopted ‘healthy eating,’ much to my irritation. She was also particular about keeping the front step, windows and net curtains clean. Colin, my dad, started off as a farm worker. He wanted to be a vet but due to illness he missed a year’s education at seven years old which meant that he left school hardly able to read or write.
After I was born, we moved from the village of Barlaston to Newcastle-Under-Lyme because my dad could earn more money in the town. In the late fifties, when the government erected pylons across the nation, he worked on the construction of these and later he found employment laying pipes for North Sea Gas. When my dad was fifty-seven, he had a brain haemorrhage at work, probably due at least in part to the vibrations of the pneumatic drill. He did not work again after that.
The Gentle Author – What was the first landscape that you knew?
Doreen Fletcher – It was composed of greys and browns – soot-streaked streets with sparrows and pigeons. I used to long for colour, for tinsel, for fairy lights and fairgrounds. Yet although I grew up in a two-up-two-down terrace in Stoke-on-Trent, every Sunday my parents took me on excursions by bus into the country, a different destination each time. This was rare at the time and I think it revealed their great sensitivity and care.
These trips were always accompanied by the purchase of a quarter pound of sweets and latterly, a brownie box camera that took tiny black and white photos. I liked going for long walks alone too. I was always looking and observing the variety of houses lining the streets I wandered through. Sometimes I roamed the countryside as well, walking along busy trunk roads. These days eyebrows might be raised, but there was nothing unusual in seeing unaccompanied children exploring back then. I loved my solitary walks.
The Gentle Author – What took you away from the Potteries?
Doreen Fletcher – I did not like living in a small town, it lacked cosmopolitanism. I hated the social constrictions and the pettiness I encountered. After A Levels, I decided I to study a subject that would earn me a living, so I enrolled on Bsc Sociology Course at North Staffordshire Polytechnic in Stoke. I have always been fascinated by other people’s lives, attitudes and behaviour.
However it proved a disastrous choice for me because the course dealt mostly with statistics and their interpretation. I did not even last two terms. So I went to work in a local tile factory – of which there were plenty in those days – where my job was sorting broken tiles. After six months I left, realising there was no future in it for me.
I knew my vocation was to be an artist. I spent a very happy year doing a foundation course in Newcastle-Under-Lyme. I felt at home there. I was comfortable and totally at ease in the chaotic atmosphere of the leaky portacabins that served as our studios. For the only time in my life, I did very little work. Instead I enjoyed making friends and formed a close relationship with a fellow student. Together we moved to London in 1972 where he attended Wimbledon School of Art and I worked as an art school model.
The Gentle Author – Did you apply to art school?
Doreen Fletcher – Yes, I applied to study at Croydon College. Even then, I was very independently minded and did not want a structured degree course where I might be expected to conform to a ‘house style’. At this point, I was painting quite a lot of self-portraits and still lifes.
One day in late 1973 I saw an exhibition of paintings of Mow Cop by Jack Simcock in Cork Street. Mow Cop was a hilltop village not far from my home. In Newcastle-under-Lyme, if I leaned out of my bedroom window at a dangerous angle, I could just see the Victorian folly on the summit of Mow Cop in the distance.
The houses were built out of Peak District sandstone and local millstone grit. The place was bleak and dour. I was captivated, deciding then that I wanted to be an urban landscape painter, recording my own environment.
The Gentle Author – Where did you live when you first came to London?
Doreen Fletcher – To begin with, I stayed around Wimbledon, then I spent seven years living in Paddington where my fascination with urban scenes escalated. Coming from a small town in the North, it was an exciting place to be. I was close to the Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, Notting Hill Gate and Portobello Road. I started painting local landmarks, the Electric cinema and the Serpentine boathouse. Then I became interested in Underground stations at night, Bayswater and Paddington. This project continued when I moved to the East End.
The Gentle Author – What brought you to the East End?
Doreen Fletcher – At that time artists were attracted to live and work in the East End because of the cheap studio space that was available. It was easy to rent because the local population were moving out and and artists were happy to live in dilapidated accommodation if it gave them room to work. Before long, a mutually supportive community of artists developed around Bow, Stepney and Mile End.
The Gentle Author – How do you remember the East End then?
Doreen Fletcher – I noticed the skies first, open and dramatic as they advanced into Essex. There were corrugated fences everywhere, still bombsites where buddleia proliferated and a few prefabs inhabited by artists. There was an openness in the streets which has since gone, now every corner has been built up and every vacant space filled.
Yet the distinctive quality of light remains particular to this part of London, a luminescence generated by the proximity of the river. I loved it here because I had had enough of the West End. It felt to me as if I were returning home. Like Stoke, the East End was predominantly working class and also had once been an important centre for industry. Corner shops and tiny pubs proliferated among street markets.
The Gentle Author – Why did you start painting the East End?
Doreen Fletcher – I was excited visually by being somewhere new to me yet that also reminded me of where I grew up. In the Potteries, the town planners’ ethos was ‘If it’s old, let’s sweep it away’ – regardless of its cultural and historical significance. I saw the same fate awaiting the East End. The first painting I did here was the bus stop in Mile End in 1983 and then Rene’s Café next.
The Gentle Author – Was this your full time occupation?
Doreen Fletcher – I was working as an artists’ model in an art school. It was the most boring job you could imagine, but I stuck at it during term-time so I could have periods of full-time painting. I was able to keep myself by working three days a week as a model.
The Gentle Author – How central to your life were your paintings at that time?
Doreen Fletcher – Painting was the focal point of my life. My studio was a small room at the top of a run-down three-storey house in Clemence Street. It faced north so the light was good for painting.
I walked around the East End at different times of day and in different weathers. Eventually a particular scene imprinted itself on my mind that could have potential as a painting. I did thumbnail sketches and took a photograph. Once I had gathered this information, I made a detailed drawing as a basis for the painting. This might evolve over a period of months or even years, as the tension built up between my need to represent reality and the demands made by the painting itself. I always struggle to resolve a picture in an abstract way as well as portraying a subject. To this day,I follow this methodical process to make a painting.
I worked a minimum of twenty-eight hours a week, a target I still adhere to. I was determined not to become a Sunday painter.
The Gentle Author – Did you have ambition for this work?
Doreen Fletcher – Yes and I did have some limited success in the eighties showing within the borough, receiving a few grants and being accepted in open exhibitions such as the Whitechapel and the London Group. Companies bought work from time to time and local people appreciated my paintings, but there was little interest from any critics or commercial galleries.
The Gentle Author – Did you pursue other avenues to get recognition for your work?
Doreen Fletcher – Once a month, I used to send off slides in response to competitions and requests for submissions in Artists’ Newsletter. It was time-consuming and costly without reward.
The Gentle Author – How did you maintain morale through those twenty years?
Doreen Fletcher – I am an optimist and I remained optimistic up until the late nineties, when my work grew increasingly unfashionable due to the rise of conceptual art. It became more difficult to find any places where I could exhibit my work that would even accept representational painting. My work was simply out of fashion My interest in the East End was waning too, as Canary Wharf transformed into a financial metropolis. I found I did not know what to paint any more. It felt as though a period of my life was coming to an end.
The Gentle Author – What made you feel that?
Doreen Fletcher – The East End was changing in a way that I could not understand or portray. The new buildings were densely packed, destroying the distinctive sense of place and community. At first, I was interested in the construction – on the Isle of Dogs for instance – but once it was finished there were just too many people and too much architectural uniformity.
The Gentle Author – Were there changes in your life too?
Doreen Fletcher – I grew more involved in teaching art to youngsters with special needs, taking a part-time job in further education. I became more interested because I found I was good at it and my teaching work was appreciated. Gradually, I worked more in the administrative side of education, supporting other lecturers.
The Gentle Author – Did you find that satisfying?
Doreen Fletcher – Yes, I was earning a salary and contributing to the community. It was rewarding to be working with other people after my years of isolation. I enjoyed participating in the local community rather than being an observer.
The Gentle Author – Once you had completed nearly twenty years of painting the East End, what were your feelings about that series of work?
Doreen Fletcher – I did not realise that I was creating any kind of social document at the time because I was so absorbed with each painting, each one constituting such a lot of work. I had tried very hard to get my pictures out there and get them seen. I had hoped for some kind of recognition. I was never ambitious in terms of international recognition but I did feel that the work was good enough to be recognised more than it was.
The Gentle Author – Were you disappointed?
Doreen Fletcher – Yes. I remember the day I made a conscious decision to pack away my paints. It was November 16th 2004. I said, ‘That’s it! I am not going to paint again.’ I had no knowledge that I was undertaking a journey and enduring a struggle that other artists in the East End had already experienced. If I had been aware of the East London Group and their example, I might have had the heart to continue.
The Gentle Author – Do you think your project reached its culmination?
Doreen Fletcher – At the time I did not think so, I believed I had done all that work for nothing. But looking at the work again, I am very glad I did it. I think it was important that I recorded something which has now vanished.
The Gentle Author – Do you think you evolved as a painter by doing this work?
Doreen Fletcher – If I had I been taken on by a gallery, I might have developed more as a painter. Instead, I think I found a method of working that suited what I was doing and I stuck with it. Maybe with a bit more encouragement I would have done what I am doing now, since I have come back to painting.
The Gentle Author – How do you judge if one of your paintings is successful?
Doreen Fletcher – A painting is successful for me when I believe I have captured an essence of a place in a moment. A picture must sit comfortably and solidly on the canvas. My concern as an artist is with the pockets of life that we ignore.
Now I have started painting again and the series of pictures I have been working in the last two years are the result of having lived in East London for thirty-five years. I have been reflecting on how much remains from the early years and come to appreciate how those people who still live here have adapted to the changes.
In the early eighties, this part of London was run down and very few people chose to be here. Some streets and buildings remain as reminders of that era, left to compete with new concepts of London that have emerged since the closing of local industries and the rise of corporate culture. In representing their utilitarian quality, I envisage my subjects not only as reminders of the past but also as active survivors struggling positively to find a place in a world changing beyond recognition.
I am a painter concerned with environments that are or have been inhabited. I try to resolve the struggle between how I see things and with abstraction, where the pictorial demands of structure, organisation and balance hold sway. My work is carried out slowly and methodically using a range of techniques to communicate a place of quietude and serenity. The difference between the work I am making today and the work I was doing before is that now I am a participant, no longer only an observer of East End life.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF DOREEN FLETCHER’S BOOK FOR £20
George Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet
You might like to see other work by George Cruikshank
Jack Sheppard, Thief, Highwayman & Escapologist
The Bloody Romance of the Tower
Henry Mayhew’s Punch & Judy Man
and these other alphabets
So Long, Terry Bloomfield
Terry Bloomfield, fishmonger & photographer, died on 28th December last year and I publish this gallery of pictures as a tribute to his unique talent. Terry was born in 1934 and grew up in Columbia Rd as the third generation of a family that worked at Billingsgate, where he ran his own shellfish business. Between 1982, when the market moved to the Isle of Dogs, and 2011, when Terry retired, he recorded the life of Billingsgate in thousands of black and white photographs.
Photographs copyright © Estate of Terry Bloomfield
You may also like to read these other Billingsgate stories
In Old Globetown
I took advantage of the rare hours of January sunlight yesterday to take a stroll over to Globetown. You walk east from Museum Gardens in Bethnal Green through Sugar Loaf Walk and immediately recognise you have entered a different neighbourhood, where an atmosphere of domestic quietude prevails in distinct contrast to the clamour you encountered at the junction of Bethnal Green Rd and Cambridge Heath Rd. Cats prowl the empty streets while the residents are either snug in their homes or enjoying a long afternoon in The Camel or The Florists’ Arms.
This former marshland bisected by Globe Lane – now Globe Rd – takes its name from a old tavern that once stood here. The area was built up in the early nineteenth century by exploitative developers, throwing up poor quality homes for weavers on low incomes. Before long, commentators were comparing the notorious Globetown slum with Saffron Hill and St Giles High St. Consequently, most of the good quality nineteenth century building that remains today was constructed as social housing to alleviate the legacy of this poor development.
In Globe Rd, the first structure that you come upon is the handsome red brick Merceron Houses constructed by East End Dwellings Company in 1901. It was built upon the garden of Joseph Merceron, the most reprehensible eighteenth century resident of Bethnal Green, whose notoriety had faded by the end of the nineteenth century. Across the road is a modest sequence of terraces of workers’ cottages in the Arts & Crafts style from 1906 and, directly to the south, towers the handsome Board School with Mendip House and Shepton House beyond. All these buildings were the work of East End Dwellings Company and together they form a sympathetic complex of streets on a human scale, with The Camel adorned with its attractive Art Nouveau tiles at the centre.
Walking south and turning east into the Roman Rd, I was dismayed to discover the beloved Victoria Fish Bar has closed forever. After a lifetime of service behind the fryer, the proprietors have finally retired. On Sunday, Globetown Market Sq was empty but on weekdays this is a popular destination with stalls of keenly-priced fresh produce and the East End’s best wet fish barrow run by Del Downey, third generation fishmonger in this location.
I walked north up Bonner St and turned west again at the former Bishop Bonner pub into Cyprus St, built in a distinctly aspiration style as ‘Wellington St’ in 1850, still remembered in the name of the former Duke of Wellington pub. This is an astonishing and handsome example of an unaltered mid-nineteenth century streetscape.
These distinguished nineteenth century survivals are surrounded by twentieth century housing of greater and lesser quality, evidencing the continuing struggle to overcome the grim legacy of exploitative development – both historical and recent – and give everyone in the East End a decent home.
The Camel on Sugar Loaf Walk dates from before 1861 when it was named as the Museum Beer Shop
Cottages built by East End Dwellings company in Globe Rd
In Gawber Rd
Board School of 1900 in Welwyn St
Open staircase at Mendip Dwellings built by East End Dwellings Company in 1900
The Florists’ Arms in Globe Rd dates from before 1871 and its name refers to the former local culture of competitive flower growing introduced by the Huguenots
The Victoria Fish Bar in Roman Rd has recently closed forever
The Bishop Bonner, Bonner St, dates from before 1863 and its name refers to Bishop Bonner whose palace formerly stood nearby on the site of the London Chest Hospital
In Cyprus St
Memorial to former residents of Cyprus St who died in war – Bethnal Green provided the highest number of volunteers of any London borough in the First World War
Drinking fountain in Museum Gardens
You may also like to take a look at
A Few Doreen Fletcher Paintings
On the Sunday before the opening of Doreen Fletcher’s RETROSPECTIVE next week, I thought I you would show you a few of Doreen’s paintings accompanied by the stories in her own words.
All are welcome at the Private View of Doreen Fletcher’s RETROSPECTIVE at Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts, on Thursday 24th January from 6pm. The exhibition runs until 24th March.
I am IN CONVERSATION WITH DOREEN FLETCHER on Wednesday 30th January 7pm at Nunnery Gallery, showing the paintings and telling the stories. Click here for tickets
Sheldon’s Dress Shop, Knutton, 1982
“It is my mother who is looking in the window of Sheldon’s hairdressers and dress shop. She went once a week to have her hair ‘set’. At that time, she was ten years younger than I am now but considered herself old at fifty-five and dressed accordingly. When I was a child, we used to take a walk each Sunday afternoon to places such as Knutton, a former mining village on the outskirts of Newcastle-under-Lyme. Even in such a small place, a shop like Sheldon’s could support its proprietors.”
Paddington Station at Night, 1992
“Between 1976 and 1983, when I moved to the East End, I lived in Paddington. Looking at this painting now, I am transported once more into that seventies world of tawdry glamour, medium priced hotels and run-down bedsits. The streets around the underground and mainline station all had a slightly seedy quality.”
Hairdresser, Ben Jonson Rd, 2001
“For my thirteenth birthday I was given a hair-do as a rite of passage. It was a horrifying experience and the chemical sprays that were applied to my hair resulted in a life-long aversion to the hairdresser. It was n0t just the discomfort, it was the atmosphere and ambience, and the ordeal of staring into a mirror for half an hour. This salon was part of a twenties parade of shops in Ben Jonson Rd that also contained the launderette I painted. It has been swept away.”
Ice Cream Van, Poplar, 1998
“One of the best remembered pleasures of my childhood was to hear the tinkling tune of the ice cream man that would have me running out into the street. My drawing of this parked van is waiting for the school exodus on the corner of Rhodeswell Rd and Dora St on the Lockesley Estate, Poplar.
Recently some friends visited with their five-year-old granddaughter and, at the sound of the jingle, her eyes lit up. I took her to buy an ice cream and watched with pleasure as she enjoyed the same focused delight in its consumption as I experienced decades before.”
Woodstock Terrace, Poplar, 2002
“When I was teaching at Tower Hamlets College in the nineties, I often used to walk to Chrisp St Market during my lunch break. I liked best taking the quiet road along Poplar High Street past St Matthias Church and down Woodstock Terrace. The most interesting building in the terrace was sandwiched between the end house and the betting shop on the corner of Poplar High St. It looked as if it might once have been a halt for travellers with horses, a staging post perhaps. In fact this building had been a stable and was now used as a haulage yard.
A little while after I completed my coloured pencil drawing, a ‘Dangerous Structure, Keep Off’ notice appeared. Then posters appeared heralding a campaign to save the ‘stables’ but in 2006 a demolition crew moved in and this characterful piece of Victorian architecture vanished into a pile of rubble.”
Roundabout, Turners Rd, Bow, 1990
“I started this drawing of Turners Rd as a record of the disappearance of the corner building in my painting ‘Turners Rd.’ We are looking at piecemeal demolition taking place in order to make way for the reconstruction of Turners Rd in its entirety during the nineties. Perhaps the elegant four storey houses to the rear of the drawing should have been renovated? Yet the intention was honourable – to build affordable housing for those unable to pay high private rents or get a mortgage, many of whom had large families.”
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF DOREEN FLETCHER’S BOOK FOR £20
