Dorothy Rendell, Artist
Celebrating the ninth birthday of Spitalfields Life with a week of favourite posts from the past year
Self portrait by Dorothy Rendell
I feel touched and privileged to have been given the eleventh hour opportunity last year to interview Artist Dorothy Rendell who died in January. It is a matter of regret that she did not receive the recognition she deserved for her painting earlier in her life, yet I take consolation that she died with a copy of my interview at her bedside and she took great delight in the many appreciative comments she received for her work, regarding this late public acknowledgement as vindication of a kind.
I enjoyed visiting Dorothy Rendell to hear her stories, admire her paintings and share her company. At ninety-four years old, Dorothy was taking her ease, relaxing in the warm with a glass of red wine and a cigarette while contemplating the winter sunlight in the garden of her tiny cottage at Mile End Place. Blessed with magnificent cheek bones and a profile worthy of Edith Sitwell, Dorothy was a natural raconteuse who possessed the hauteur of another age, tempered by an endearing, caustic sense of humour.
Studying at St Martin’s School of Art during World War Two, Dorothy began her career as an artist with a studio in Kensington where she encountered the likes of Henry Lamb, Carel Weight and Orovida Pissarro. Yet it was in Stepney working for more than forty years at Harry Gosling School that she discovered the joyful expression of her abilities and here she undertook a series of portraits of pupils that spanned her career.
Just a handful of unexhibited oil paintings bear witness to a significant talent which might have made Dorothy famous if she had received the recognition she deserved. Instead it led her to the East End – by way of Italy – and ultimately to a modest life of fulfilment as an inspirational and passionate art teacher.
“Very few people really say what they think and say it bluntly and openly regardless, they couch it round with tact, but I am not like that. At ninety-four, I do not belong to any age. When I think ‘fifty years ago today,’ it does not seem all that time ago to me.
I had to give up my art work because I had no money and I could not find anywhere to paint. I had a huge studio at the back of a house in Warwick Gardens, Kensington, which was freezing cold and falling down, the rain would drip in. It had once belonged to Jacob Epstein. It was the most romantic studio. People used to love coming round and I had constant visitors. I used to paint there but I wasted an awful lot of time working to make money when I should have been painting. I exhibited at the Leicester Gallery and at the Royal Academy, but I never had a solo show. I just put things up here and there. I muddled through life really, but I have had an interesting life.
I came to the East End because I could not get a job anywhere else, people were terribly against women artists. They still are in this country. I used to go for teaching jobs and I had very good credentials, including references from Henry Lamb, Vivian Pitchforth and Mr Dickie who was an Inspector of Schools, but I never got the job because some man would come along and swipe it. This used to infuriate me because I knew that I was better and I was better at teaching too. I never thought I would own a house and when I came to live in Mile End Place, people said, ‘You’re crazy, you’ve bought a load of rubble, but I think it’s marvellous!’ All of my life has been flukes like that.
I started drawing very early on, at ten years old. Dorothy Rushforth, my mother, came from the north of England and went to art school, she was quite advanced for her time. My father came from a long line of gentleman farmers in Devonshire and he was a bit of a villain. His family lost all their money through one of them being a gambler. So he travelled the world on luxury liners doing doubtful business deals and brought people back and my mother had to entertain them and cook for them. They just frittered away their lives.
My mother encouraged me to draw and when I was eighteen I got a prize for the best artist in the school but nobody mentioned it and nobody took me to prize giving. It is most extraordinary when I think about it now! Of course, the war was on and one was whisked from here to there.
I came up to London in wartime and I was by myself, I did not know a soul. I got one room in an attic in Pembroke Sq, Notting Hill Gate. There were lots of interesting people and a very good cinema there, with marvellous French films, I had never seen anything like them. It was exciting. Then I got into St Martin’s School of Art through doing evening classes because I had to work in the day to earn money. At art school, I met Vivian Pitchforth who was a well known draftsman and if you were taught how to draw by him, it was a great honour. Somehow, he noticed me. I do not know how because I never said a word to anyone.
The art school was in Charing Cross Rd then, it was lovely. I inhabited all those dumps in Old Compton St where you got cheap meals for tuppence ha’penny. We all used to go to them, I am quite sure we were eating horseflesh! There were lots of little cafes, it was wonderful. Robert Beulah who was a Royal Academician, his mother ran a cafe there and she quite liked me, she thought I was quiet and well behaved – so we had a little clientele there. It was very good. I loved my years in Soho, living in that awful attic in Notting Hill Gate which is probably worth a fortune now! How life changes.
I met Henry Lamb, the artist, and I thought he was marvellous, he was very quiet and very scholarly. He became my friend and he followed my work when I left art school, and he used to write to me over the years. I never earned any money as an artist, I had not got the gift of making money, I would always belittle my work. I do a picture and think, ‘That’s quite good’ but then I would think ‘That bit there needs changing.’ I remember doing a painting of lemons, I was quite pleased with it. I did it in my father’s bank which was open on Sunday, so I put all these lemons on the counter with a cauliflower and I painted them. I did not think much of it yet years after I put it in an exhibition and people said, ‘You’re brilliant!’ It means a lot when you are eighteen but there you are, what does it matter now? I enjoyed doing it.
I tried getting my work exhibited by galleries but it was an awful fag, I made a living by doing odd jobs. I travelled a lot and I read a terrific amount because I was too shy to talk to people – and that was a good thing because I got a wide vocabulary. I travelled all over Italy, you did not hitch then but I got lifts somehow and I used to draw in cafes. I found that this was terribly popular and I could draw because of my marvellous tuition. It was wonderful.
When I first went to Florence, somebody sent me there and said, ‘Try and make a go of it!’ I did not have any money, if I had a few quid I was surprised. I shared a house with extraordinary people. One or two very wealthy, one or two officers in the army, a Spanish girl, various other people, and me. I used to go out and draw in the evening because I love watching Italian life outdoors. Those drawings are scattered all over Italy. It was fun, I loved drawing ordinary people sitting around chatting. They did not mind where I came from. I loved it. I would love to be Italian.
Eventually, I came to the East End and I had to go round awful schools. I was not used to these East End types of all nationalities but I stuck it out – I think I must had a bit of character – and I eventually got a job at Harry Gosling School where they had a remarkable headmistress. She was astonishing, she became my best friend instantly. She was called Sybil Mary Parry. She got me going on life really. She got some brilliant results. She was a state scholar, which means she was the best eighteen year old taking exams in the county. She was very intelligent and she had a big clientele of boyfriends, who all played rugby for Wales. I can still hear here shrieking across the room when the television was on and Wales were playing.
The school was in a very poor part of the East End and I could see that for the children it was life or death to get a good education, and she saw to it that they did. She was very eccentric, she would talk to people all the time and even go round to the betting shop herself to put her ten bob on the Derby. Sibyl used to keep a bottle of sherry in her filing cabinet. She was a marvellous character. She is not forgotten.
She used to publicise my children’s art and I became quite well known with the inspector. He really loved this school and he used to come every week or so just to see it. What a school! It turned out some marvellous people and I still hear from them. Old people get in touch and say, ‘You used to teach me.’
You are dropped in, and you either survive or you die – but I survived.”
Orovida Pissarro, Camille Pissarro’s granddaughter. “I met her through Carel Weight whom I encountered in Warwick Gardens, he had a studio down the road. One day, I was looking outside a junk shop in the Earl’s Court Rd and he asked me, ‘What are you wanting?’ I said, ‘I’m going out to buy a chair because I have a quartet coming to practice in my studio and I have not got four chairs.’ He said, ‘Come with me, I can give you a chair.’ So he took me to his house and we became friends.
I used to cook for Orovida at her home in Redcliffe Gardens, she was a great gourmet. She was Jewish but she loved roast pork. After the meal, she would go to sleep and I would be painting away. She had no children, she was hermaphrodite. I realised that very quickly. She had lovely things and she would get out bundles of letters from Zola. I loved going to see her but she was eccentric and very demanding, she liked daft things on the television like Doctor Finlay’s Casebook. She used to have a birthday party every year with a lot of interesting people and I went along with Carel Weight, and we would have a feast of roast pork. She was a very good painter and her paintings were quite interesting. Orovida liked being painted and it was a marvellous interior with lovely things round her. I knew her for years until she died.”
Wapping – “I got a window from a pub beside Wapping Pier Head and it took me weeks. I did drawings and squared it up. I am not one of those who does quick ones.”
Wapping, View from an upper window at Wapping Pier Head in spring
View across Mount Pleasant from Doughty St -“I had a friend who had a flat there, next door to Dickens’ House. I had many a meal there and stayed the night. She was a teacher and a writer, but she was always having affairs in Paris. With her job and boyfriends, the crises she put me through. A good friend.”
One of Dorothy’s pupils at Harry Gosling School
“This little boy was one of the pupils I taught. A little horror! He’d been badly behaved – so the head teacher told me, ‘Take him and make him sit for you!’ So he had to sit still for about two or three days. I think I did a painting of him too”
“This is a nice little girl who had a terrible life. She was pretty and I liked her, so I drew her. I think I probably went to her house. It was squared up for a painting but I don’t know what happened to the painting. Children are very good to draw as long as they are not commissioned, when they are commissioned they are hellish. One mother came to me and wanted a portrait of her daughter. She looked a nice kid and I didn’t charge very much. She wore jeans, but when she turned up she was all dressed up – it was awful!”
“I used to give them their drawings. They used to beg me for them and were so persuasive that I used to hand them over, until one day a boy took my drawing and folded it up in half and put it in his pocket. I nearly screamed! They never did that in Italy, they treasure their drawings there.”
“This is Harry. Miss Parry, the head teacher, she adored this drawing. Harry was really thick and he used to look at you with that blank expression, but he was marvellously funny and he made a tremendous effort. Somebody who used to work with me said, ‘I’m going to bring Harry to Miss Parry’s funeral,’ and I said, ‘But he’ll be middle aged now.’ She found him and he came to the funeral. I couldn’t believe it. He was a lorry driver for Charringtons.”
“This was a little Afghan girl, I thought she was beautiful. She was a vain little girl who would sit for hours in the art room. Miss Parry thought it was better for pupils to sit with me than to sit and do nothing, so she would send the badly behaved ones to the art room and I would draw them. They liked being drawn, they were flattered by it.”
“I never had any absentees from my art classes, they were always very keen. As my head teacher used to say, ‘They’ll always go to art with you!’ They enjoyed doing it. There were always a certain number who could not draw, who found it very difficult. I would get them started making patterns but they would think they could not do that. So I would say, ‘Yes you can.’ I would get something like an electric light bulb and say, ‘Make some patterns from what you can see with that.’ – repeating and so forth. And they would come up with some marvellous things. Then they got keen. You have to think up strange things to get children really interested.”
“This little girl, I got to know her mother and father, and she went on to grammar school. The children of immigrants always did much better than the English ones because their parents wanted them to work.”
“This was in the doctor’s waiting room. Quite a well known doctor round here invited me to draw there.”
“When I started teaching I thought I would teach in the West End but they would not take women, so I had to move to the East End – but I don’t regret that at all because I got so wrapped up in it and there were all these places where I could go and draw.” Dorothy Rendell (1924-2018)
Paintings copyright © Estate of Dorothy Rendell
Portrait of Dorothy Rendell at ninety-four © Lucinda Douglas Menzies
At Margolis Silver
Celebrating the ninth birthday of Spitalfields Life with a week of favourite posts from the past year
Kudret Yirtici, Polisher
There are still traditional manufacturing industries thriving in the East End – as Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I discovered when we visited Margolis Silver, market-leaders in silverware, at their factory in London Fields. Here we found a band of highly-skilled silversmiths with proud dirty faces, designing and manufacturing silverware for the swankiest West End hotels, restaurants and clubs, employing techniques that have not changed in centuries.
Upstairs in his solitary garret, we met the most senior member of staff, Albert Alot, a virtuoso metal spinner of a lifetime’s experience who can take a disc of copper and expertly spin it into a cup on a lathe with all the flamboyant magic of Rumplestiltskin. Down below, led by Richard Courcha whose father started the company half a century ago, we found the polishers at work, cleaning the copper vessels prior to plating. With their grimy visages and overalls topped off by a characterful array of hats, they were a charismatic band who generously welcomed us into their lair and tolerated our nosy questions with patience and good humour. Next door, Chloe Robertson supervised the electroplating, first with nickel and then silver, cheerfully presiding over two enormous boiling vats of steaming hydrochloric acid and livid green arsenic bubbling away.
There is a compelling alchemy to this fascinating process which, thanks to immense skills of the silversmiths, transforms the raw material of copper sheets into sophisticated gleaming silverware, sufficient to grace the grandest tables with its luxurious allure. It is exceptional to visit a workshop such as this, where everyone takes such obvious delight in their collective achievement.
Away from the workshop, Valerie Lucas runs an office stacked to the roof with myriad examples of silverware, teapots, coffeepots, condiments, basins, bowls and plates of every imaginable design. Here we met director Lawrence Perovetz, who is of Huguenot descent and cherishes the living tradition of Huguenot silversmiths in London through his work.
Yet all these people, machines and processes are crammed into a tiny factory that few in London Fields even know exists. As Polisher Pascal Fernandes quipped, summing it up succinctly for me, “It’s a little house of treasures this is!”
Arthur Alot – “I’m from Plaistow and I was born in the war. I’ve been doing this all my life, since I did an apprenticeship down at Shaw’s Metal Spinners in Stratford years and years ago. They’ve gone now. Years ago in the twenties, the old spinners used to walk in dressed in spats and whatever. I moved to a factory in the Holloway Rd where I met this spinner, a proper one, who had come out of Hungary at the time of the revolution. He had been taught by the sixth best spinner in Hungary and he taught me and my brothers. I have taught a few who are starting on their own.”
Arthur spins a cup out of a disc of copper
Arthur Alot, Metal Spinner
Richard Courcha – “I am the factory manager and I do polishing. It was my father, Thomas Courcha’s business, he started it in 1968. He was a metal polisher and he went into partnership with Johnny Mansfield in a little factory in North London and then, when this place came up for grabs in 1968, they moved in. The company was called TC Plating Ltd – Tommy Courcha Plating in full.
I came here all the time as child, every other Saturday in the back of my dad’s old red Escort van. It was a bustling place. I used to help out with the makers, there were ten makers working here during the late seventies. In those days we manufactured for the retail market, producing gallery trays, punchbowls and wine coolers that were sold in the West End. Designers would bring in their drawings, and my dad and his team would make the moulds and conjure them up.
The retail side dropped off in the eighties because of cheap products coming in from India. So then we moved into restoring antique silverware. About ten years ago, it all changed again. This was around the time I met Lawrence who had this idea of supplying hotels and now we are joined at the hip.
I came here to work in 1982. I did not have any plans to do anything else. It was a bustling business and my brother was here as well until he retired. I suppose I like the job. It is what I do. It is in my blood. It is what I grew up with. After thirty-six years, I know how to do making.”
Collin Foru-berkoh, Polisher
Bradley Hitchman – “I am a silversmith and maker of thirty-four years. When I was thirteen, I moved to Morden and the next door neighbour owned this company. A few years after I left school, I was doing a training scheme to be an engineer but I thought ‘Silversmith’ sounded more glamorous than ‘Engineer.’ So I came here. It was a struggle at first. It was very repetitive, hundreds of this, thousands of that. The same thing over and over again. But when it comes to doing it now it is second nature. Once I got the hang of things and things came easier, it was no longer boring – you just got on with it. I have always liked working with my hands. I like the creative side of this work, you can take a piece of metal and turn it into something – like this dessert trolley! Pretty much everything here is bespoke. ”
Pascal Fernandes – “I am a polisher and a finisher. Way back in 1976, I got an apprenticeship as a polisher and I was taught by three very good people. It is very dangerous work because the machines show you no mercy, they can take your hand off. At first, I found it boring but over the years you learn from other people who might do something differently. You do not necessarily copy them because each has an art of their own. My way is the way I was taught originally by a man who was taught by the best. It is creative and I took it as my living, so I must like it. You learn your lessons as you go along. You have got to take the good with the bad.”
Chloe Robertson – “I am a maker and I do electroplating as well. I did a degree in Design in Liverpool and picked working with metal and wood. I won ten thousand pounds start-up business funding and I funded myself to go to Bishopsland which is a post-graduate college for silversmiths and jewellers, and then I won an award as ‘Woodturner of the Year’ which meant I got a free workshop for a year. Then this job popped up and I have been here two years. I am the newbie, but I love this work and I intend to stay at least ten years. It is fascinating working alongside these guys who have been here for all these years, I learn something new every day. Some of these techniques they know are mind-boggling.”
Chloe plates the copper with nickel in a vat of boiling arsenic
Chloe dries the plated objects in a box of grain
Lawrence Perovetz, Director & Valerie Lucas, Secretary, Margolis Silver
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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William Morris In The East End
Celebrating the ninth birthday of Spitalfields Life with a week of favourite posts from the past year
William Morris spoke at Speakers’ Corner in Victoria Park on 26th July & 11th October 1885, 8th August 1886, 27th March & 21st May 1888
If you spotted someone hauling an old wooden Spitalfields Market orange crate around the East End, that was me undertaking a pilgrimage to some of the places William Morris spoke in the hope he might return for one last oration.
The presence of William Morris in the East End is almost forgotten today. Yet he took the District Line from his home in Hammersmith regularly to speak here through the last years of his life, despite persistent ill-health. Ultimately disappointed that the production of his own designs had catered only to the rich, Morris dedicated himself increasingly to politics and in 1884 he became editor of The Commonweal, newspaper of the Socialist League, using the coach house at Kelsmcott House in Hammersmith as its headquarters.
As an activist, Morris spoke at the funeral of Alfred Linnell, who was killed by police during a free speech rally in Trafalgar Sq in 1887, on behalf of the Match Girls’ Strike in 1888 and in the Dock Strike of 1889. His final appearance in the East End was on Mile End Waste on 1st November 1890, on which occasion he spoke at a protest against the brutal treatment of Jewish people in Russia.
When William Morris died of tuberculosis in 1896, his doctor said, ‘he died a victim to his enthusiasm for spreading the principles of Socialism.’ Morris deserves to be remembered for his commitment to the people of the East End in those years of political turmoil as for the first time unions struggled to assert the right to seek justice for their workers.
8th April 1884, St Jude’s Church, Commercial St – Morris gave a speech at the opening of the annual art exhibition on behalf of Vicar Samuel Barnett who subsequently founded Toynbee Hall and the Whitechapel Gallery.
During 1885, volunteers distributed William Morris’ What Socialists Want outside the Salmon & Ball in Bethnal Green
1st September 1885, 103 Mile End Rd
20th September 1885, Dod St, Limehouse – When police launched a violent attack on speakers of the Socialist League who defended the right to free speech at this traditional spot for open air meetings, William Morris spoke on their behalf in court on 22nd September in Stepney.
10th November 1886 & 3rd July 1887, Broadway, London Fields
November 20th 1887, Bow Cemetery – Morris spoke at the burial of Alfred Linnell, a clerk who was killed by police during a free speech rally in Trafalgar Sq. ‘Our friend who lies here has had a hard life and met with a hard death, and if our society had been constituted differently his life might have been a delightful one. We are engaged in a most holy war, trying to prevent our rulers making this great town of London into nothing more than a prison.’
9th April 1889, Toynbee Hall, Commercial St – Morris gave a magic lantern show on the subject of ‘Gothic Architecture’
1st November 1890, Mile End Waste – Morris spoke in protest against the persecution of Jews in Russia
William Morris in the East End
3rd January & 27th April 1884, Tee-To-Tum Coffee House, 166 Bethnal Green Rd
8th April 1884, St Jude’s Church, Commercial St
29th October 1884, Dod St, Limehouse
9th November 1884, 13 Redman’s Row
11th January & 12th April 1885, Hoxton Academy Schools
29th March 24th May 1885, Stepney Socialist League, 110 White Horse St
26th July & 11th October 1885, Victoria Park
8th August 1885, Socialist League Stratford
16th August 1885, Exchange Coffee House, Pitfield St, Hoxton
1st September 1885, Swaby’s Coffee House, 103 Mile End Rd
22nd September 1885, Thames Police court, Stepney (Before Magistrate Sanders)
24th January 1886, Hackney Branch Rooms, 21 Audrey St, Hackney Rd
2nd February 1886, International Working Men’s Educational Club, 40 Berners St
5th June 1886, Socialist League Stratford
11th July 1886, Hoxton Branch of the Socialist League, 2 Crondel St
24th August 1886, Socialist League Mile End Branch, 108 Bridge St
13th October 1886, Congregational Schools, Swanscombe St, Barking Rd
10th November 1886, Broadway, London Fields
6th March 1887, Hoxton Branch of the Socialist League, 2 Crondel St
13th March & 12th June 1887, Hackney Branch Rooms, 21 Audrey St, Hackney Rd
27th March 1887, Borough of Hackney Club, Haggerston
27th March, 21st May, 23rd July, 21st August & 11th September, 1887 Victoria Park
24th April 1887, Morley Coffee Tavern Lecture Hall, Mare St
3rd July 1887, Broadway, London Fields
21st August 1887, Globe Coffee House, High St, Hoxton
25th September 1887, Hoxton Church
27th September 1887, Mile End Waste
18th December 1887, Bow Cemetery, Southern Grove
17th April 1888, Mile End Socialist Hall, 95 Boston St
17th April 1888, Working Men’s Radical Club, 108 Bridge St, Burdett Rd
16th June 1888, International Club, 23 Princes Sq, Cable St
17th June 1888, Victoria Park
30th June 1888, Epping Forest Picnic
22nd September 1888, International Working Men’s Education Club, 40 Berners St
9th April 1889, Toynbee Hall, Commercial St
27th June 1889, New Labour Club, 5 Victoria Park Sq, Bethnal Green
8th June 1889, International Working Men’s Education Club, 40 Berners St
1st November 1890, Mile End Waste
This feature draws upon the research of Rosemary Taylor as published in her article in The Journal of William Morris Studies. Click here to join the William Morris Society
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Sophie Spielman, Shorthand Typist
Celebrating the ninth birthday of Spitalfields Life with a week of favourite post from the past year
Portrait of Sophie Spielman by Sarah Ainslie
I had the pleasure of visiting ninety-three-year-old Sophie Spielman at her immaculate flat in Treves House, an elegant modernist block at the Whitechapel end of Vallance Rd, designed by Ralph Smorczewski and built by Stillman & Eastwick Field in 1956.
As the most senior resident in the building, where she has lived longer than anyone else, and at such a venerable age, you might expect Sophie to be taking it easy. Yet she has reluctantly found herself the focus of recent national media attention as the spokeswoman and figurehead for the residents of Treves House and the neighbouring Lister House, who are confronted with the prospect of losing their homes as part of Tower Hamlets Council’s plans to demolish and redevelop the properties.
Blessed with natural dignity and possessing a innate sense of decorum, Sophie is an heroic figure who is able to face these current troubles with fortitude, viewing her situation from the perspective of one who has lived a full life and experienced a great deal. In particular, I was fascinated by the pleasing irony that Sophie who was born into an Iranian Jewish family, resident in India, should find herself at home in Whitechapel for the last half century, living among Jewish and Asian neighbours.
Sophie clasped her hands and gave me a world-weary smile, casting her mind back over the long journey which led her to the domestic happiness she found in Whitechapel, before confessing her disappointment that anyone could be so petty as to challenge her right to live out her days in her home of fifty-five years.
“I was born in Bombay but my parents were Iranians. My grandmother was called Rachel and my mother was Leah, they were born in Iran. When my grandfather died, my mother was still very small and so my grandmother brought her to Bombay. Those children that were married stayed in Iran but those that were young came with her to Bombay, where there was a Jewish community known as the Sassoons who were from Iraq. They came to Bombay and they were like the Rothschilds of the East, so there was help there. We stayed there and I went to a Jewish school that was founded by the Sassoons.
When I was older, I worked in the Bombay Telephone Company for about twelve years. I joined as a shorthand typist, but I preferred to work with my hands because that is what I like to do. So I went into the Inspection Department checking all the different parts that go into a telephone.
At that time, India was under British rule and I had very good English. Although I had an English and a Jewish education, I felt closest to the English. My brother went to Canada for a while. When he came back, he said, ‘I’m going to England, do you want to come?’ So I said, ‘Oh I’d love to!’ That was my dream to come to England.
When I came here in 1957, I was first in Stamford Hill but, when I met my husband Nathan Spielman and got married, he already had this flat in Whitechapel. He was moved here in 1959 from Anthony St which was demolished and the residents were all given new flats. He worked in the railways, as a ticket collector at Liverpool St Station. He told me had been involved in the anti-fascist movement and was at the Battle of Cable St in 1936. He passed away in 1982 when my daughter Gloria was nineteen. I only had one child, my one and only – but she has five children!
I worked in Nortons, the suitcase factory, as a secretary in the office. I worked there until I got married and Gloria was born. At first, I took her to nursery and, when she was bit older and went to school, I worked part-time in Hatton Garden, in an office where they received and sold jewellery.
When I first moved into Treves House in 1962, it was all new and modern and I thought it was very nice. Now it is different, the council has neglected it for years, but I do not want to move from here. We had very good neighbours. Most of the original residents have died or moved away, apart from me. There is one tenant still living in the flat that was his grandparents, who were the very first to move in. I have Nora, an Irishwoman next door who is a very good neighbour. She always comes and visits me and asks, ‘Are you alright?’ I still walk down to Whitechapel every day, I have done it since I moved in. It is the only place I know now.
According to what I understand, the council want to pull down all these houses to build new flats, but I am a leaseholder and it has a great many years to go still. So I am fighting, I am trying to find out what is going to happen. I would like them to improve these flats by taking care of the building. They promised to replace the windows and I went to three or four meetings. What happened to that money? I went to the meeting with the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, it was the same thing. They say, ‘Yes, yes,’ but we do not know what is going on behind our backs. I wish they would tell us exactly what they want to do. They do not discuss it with us.”
Sophie in Bombay in 1950
Sophie as a young woman
Nathan & Sophie Spielman
Sophie with her daughter Gloria
Treves House, designed by Ralph Smorkczewski and built by Stillman & Eastwick Field in 1956
Treves House seen from the garden
James Leman, Silk Designer
Celebrating the ninth birthday of Spitalfields Life with a week of favourite posts from the past year
The oldest surviving set of silk designs in the world, James Leman’s album contains ninety ravishingly beautiful patterns created in Steward St, Spitalfields between 1705 and 1710 when he was a young man. It was my delight to visit the Victoria & Albert Museum and study the pages of this unique artefact, which is currently the subject of an interdisciplinary research project under the auspices of the V&A Research Institute, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Leman Album offers a rare glimpse into an affluent and fashionable sphere of eighteenth century high society, as well as demonstrated the astonishing skill of the journeyman weavers in East London three hundred years ago.
James Leman (pronounced ‘lemon’ like Leman St in Aldgate) was born in London around 1688 as the second generation of a Huguenot family and apprenticed at fourteen to his father, Peter, a silk weaver. His earliest designs in the album, executed at eighteen years old, are signed ‘made by me, James Leman, for my father.’ In those days, when silk merchants customarily commissioned journeyman weavers, James was unusual in that he was both a maker and designer. In later life, he became celebrated for his bravura talent, rising to second in command of the Weavers’ Company in the City of London. A portrait of the seventeen-twenties in the V&A collection, which is believed to be of James Leman, displays a handsome man of assurance and bearing, arrayed in restrained yet sophisticated garments of subtly-toned chocolate brown silk and brocade.
His designs are annotated with the date and technical details of each pattern, while many of their colours are coded to indicate the use of metallic cloth and different types of weave. Yet beyond these aspects, it is the aesthetic brilliance of the designs which is most striking, mixing floral and architectural forms with breathtaking flair in a way that appears startling modern. The Essex Pink and Rosa Mundi are recognisable alongside whimsical architectural forms which playfully combine classical and oriental motifs within a single design. The breadth of James Leman’s knowledge of botany and architecture as revealed by his designs reflects a wide cultural interest that, in turn, reflected flatteringly upon the tastes of his wealthy customers.
Until last year, the only securely identified woven example of a James Leman pattern was a small piece of silk in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia. Miraculously, just as the V&A’s research project on the Leman Album was launched, a length of eighteenth-century silk woven to one of his designs was offered to the museum by a dealer in historical textiles, who recognised it from her knowledge of the album. The Museum purchased the silk and is now investigating the questions that arise now design and textile may be placed side by side for the first time. With colours as vibrant as the day they were woven three hundred years ago, the sensuous allure of this glorious piece of deep pink silk adorned with elements of lustrous green, blue, red and gold shimmers across the expanse of time and is irresistibly attractive to the eye. Such was the extravagant genius of James Leman, Silk Designer.
On the left is James Leman’s design and on the right is a piece of silk woven from it, revealing that colours of the design are not always indicative of the woven textile
The reverse of each design gives the date and details of the fabric and weave
Portrait of a Master Silk Weaver by Michael Dahl, 1720-5 – believed to be James Leman
All images copyright © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Click here to read about recent research into James Leman’s Album
With grateful thanks to: Dr Olivia Horsfall Turner, Senior Curator of Designs – Dr Victoria Button, Senior Paper Conservator – Clare Browne, Senior Curator of Textiles – Dr Lucia Burgio, Senior Scientist and Eileen Budd, V&A Research Institute Project Manager
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Ninth Annual Report
In late August, upon the anniversary of starting to write Spitalfields Life, it is my custom to make a summary of the year’s activities, prior to taking a short break and recommencing in September.
When I began nine years ago, my ambition was to write celebrating the people of the East End. More than three thousand stories later, this undertaking has proven an education. In learning of the extraordinary resilience of East Enders, equally I have become aware of their struggles.
In 2012, I was involved in the founding of the East End Trades Guild because I believe that independent shops and small businesses here need to collaborate to fight for their survival. The excessive increases in business rates and rents are destroying these small endeavours that have characterised the East End for centuries. You will have read in these pages of the plight of traders operating under railway arches as Network Rail hikes the rents to unrealistic levels prior to selling them off. Thousands of people in London and across the country will lose their livelihoods. Similarly, the redevelopment of workshops is destroying affordable workspaces for small trades. The human cost of this became starkly apparent with the suicide of Kevin Cordery, Clerkenwell jewellery worker, following his eviction from his workshop by a developer this spring.
In Spitalfields, the redevelopment of the London Fruit & Wool Exchange, retaining just the facade of the original building, nears completion. It will be occupied by a single international legal corporation replacing hundreds of small businesses that formerly occupied this publicly-owned building. On a more positive note, the architect for the monstrous development on the Bishopsgate Goodsyard has been fired, and the proposal for monolithic towers of luxury flats aimed at the international market and overshadowing the Boundary Estate abandoned. Meanwhile, British Land’s plans for the demolition of most of Norton Folgate remain in abeyance as the market for offices for financial industries declines in the City of London.
Gratifyingly, at the Geffrye Museum, the restoration is underway of the 1838 Marquis of Lansdowne that we fought to save. In the City of London, the corporation rejected the developer’s appeal to revoke the Asset of Community Value status for the historic Still & Star in Aldgate which we campaigned for.
No decision has yet been made about the future of the historic Bethnal Green Mulberry in the grounds of the former London Chest Hospital next to Victoria Park and I am hopeful it will be saved.
As you know, I support a scheme to save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry proposed by the UK Historic Buildings Preservation Trust and Arte Factum, reopening it as a working foundry marrying old and new technology, and offering apprenticeships and training to local people. Unfortunately the developer who has acquired the foundry wants to redevelop it as a boutique hotel like Shoreditch House. In order to proceed, they need to apply to the council for permission for a change of use from foundry to hotel. When this happens, I hope you will join me in challenging this application which would destroy the possibility of any future for the Whitechapel Bell Foundry forever.
Last autumn, I was proud to publish East End Vernacular, Artists who painted London’s East End streets in the 20th century, reclaiming the work of forgotten artists whose works form a continuum stretching back to the nineteenth century. This summer, I collaborated with Batsford Books to publish Adam Dant’s Maps of London & Beyond, collecting Adam’s celebrated cartography which has graced these pages in recent years.
Already a year has passed since the death of my beloved old cat Mr Pussy and now that Schrodinger, his successor, is established in his new home, I feel the time is right to bring out The Life & Times Of Mr Pussy, A Memoir of a Favourite Cat in September.
Over the next week, I will be publishing favourite posts from the past year until I resume with new stories on Monday 3rd September.
Thus another year passes in the pages of Spitalfields Life.
Click here to pre-order a copy of THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY
Click here to order a signed copy of EAST END VERNACULAR
Click here to order a signed copy of MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND
Schrodinger, formerly Shoreditch church cat, came to live with The Gentle Author this year
You may like to read my earlier Annual Reports
A Walk Around The Docks With Lew Tassell
Constable Tassell of the City of London Police is going to escort us around the London Docks today
Police Constable Tassell, 1971
“During the summer of 1971, I was on duty one Sunday on Tower Bridge, walking up and down and spending a bit of time in the control box. On my way back to Bishopsgate where I was stationed, I bumped into a couple of London Port Authority Police who were opening up St Katharine Dock to have a look inside. I said, ‘I’d love to have a look in there myself.’ and they replied, ‘When you finish work, come round to our office in Thomas More St – we’ll give you the keys and you can spend the afternoon in Western Dock and Eastern Dock up to Shadwell Basin.’ So I said, ‘That’s wonderful, thankyou very much!’
I dashed back to Bishopsgate Police Station where I was living at the time, changed and got my camera, picked up the keys and made my way to the Western Dock just east of St Katharine Dock. Today this area is a housing estate and a supermarket, and virtually all the water has gone. So I spent the afternoon going round the derelict docks taking pictures. It was quite unsafe as you can see from some of the photographs. There are only eighteen pictures because I used the other eighteen frames on the film to take pictures of my girlfriend at the time, whom I married the next year and is my wife today.’
Western Dock parallel with Pennington St looking east
Looking towards Wapping Pierhead
Looking west across Western Dock
Bridge between Western Dock to the left and Tobacco Dock on the right
Interior in Western Dock
Interior in Western Dock
Western Dock looking towards Tower Bridge
Western Dock looking towards Wellclose Sq
Western Dock looking towards St George-in-the-East
Western Dock looking east
Southern part of Western Dock, partly demolished
At Crescent Warehouse
Interior of Crescent Warehouse
Interior of Crescent Warehouse
Interior of Crescent Warehouse
Buildings east of St Katharine Dock
Semi-demolished buildings east of St Katharine Dock
Photographs copyright © Lew Tassell
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