Allen & Hanburys’ Surgical Appliances
If any readers are feeling under the weather and in need of a tonic in these grim January days, look no further than Allen & Hanburys’ 1938 catalogue of Surgical Instruments & Appliances (courtesy of Rupert Blanchard of Styling & Salvage). Founded in 1715 in Plough Court, Lombard St by Silvanus Bevan, Allen & Hanburys moved to Bethnal Green in 1874 where they built a factory to manufacture surgical appliances and operating tables – producing an unparalleled array of medical equipment, until they were bought by Glaxo in 1958 and closed in the nineteen sixties. Today the factory still stands, incorporated into a new housing development.
Instrument Fitting
Machine Shop & Operation Table Erection
Tinsmiths’ Shop
Sheet Metal & Furniture Shops
Machine Shop
Location of Allen & Hanburys factory in Bethnal Green
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Adam Dant’s Map Of Jewish Spitalfields
Everyone who remembers Jewish Spitalfields remembers it differently and – following our appeal in these pages – Adam Dant has collated readers’ suggestions to produce his MAP OF JEWISH SPITALFIELDS which you see below. The map was inspired by a mythical novelty placemat from Bloom’s Restaurant in Whitechapel.
Adam’s print is being displayed for the first time at the London Art Fair in Islington which opens today and runs until Sunday 20th January. Spitalfields Life readers may obtain free tickets for this event by entering the code 19TAGFINEARTS at London Art Fair.
Click on the map to enlarge and explore Jewish Spitalfields
Adam Dant’s MAP OF JEWISH SPITALFIELDS was the last map completed before he was forced out of his studio in Club Row this week. Adam worked there since 1991, when he moved to Redchurch St to be close to the printing trades based nearby.
Not so long ago, Rachel Whiteread and Tim Noble & Sue Webster also had studios on the street, but Adam was the last artist to leave prior to the redevelopment of the building. Knowing this move was imminent encouraged me to publish MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND last year, collecting for posterity the body of work he achieved in this era.
So I hope Adam takes consolation that his MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND has been shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Photography & Illustrated Travel Book of the Year 2019 to be announced on February 28th. Fingers crossed!
The last artist leaves Redchurch St – Adam Dant vacates his studio where he has drawn maps since 1991 Photograph © Sarah Ainslie
CLICK TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND BY ADAM DANT
Adam Dant’s MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND is a mighty monograph collecting together all your favourite works by Spitalfields Life‘s Contributing Cartographer in a beautiful big hardback book.
Including a map of London riots, the locations of early coffee houses and a colourful depiction of slang through the centuries, Adam Dant’s vision of city life and our prevailing obsessions with money, power and the pursuit of pleasure may genuinely be described as ‘Hogarthian.’
Unparalleled in his draughtsmanship and inventiveness, Adam Dant explores the byways of London’s cultural history in his ingenious drawings, annotated with erudite commentary and offering hours of fascination for the curious.
The book includes an extensive interview with Adam Dant by The Gentle Author.
Adam Dant’s limited edition prints are available to purchase through TAG Fine Arts
At The House Of Dreams
A number forty bus took me from Aldgate to the House of Dreams and it only took half an hour to arrive at the front door. Once across the threshold, an alternative cosmos of colour and eye-popping surreal fantasy awaits, transporting you far from the London rain.
Perhaps one of the happiest people I have met, Stephen Wright delights to share the strange but joyous world of his personal subconscious, peopled with a universe of outlandish celestial beings – all made tangible within the interior of a modest Victorian terrace.
For this ever-growing endeavour is no random installation, but an endearingly intimate diary of Stephen’s emotional and spiritual life in sculptural form – as he was eager to explain when I dropped by last week.
“There is no plan – it’s just evolving, like life itself! My house is like a baby that needs constant feeding. It says, ‘Mama, I need more food!’ and I say, ‘Oh, give me a break.’
It began as a response to a series of programmes by Jarvis Cocker about ‘Outsider Art.’ When I saw those, I thought, ‘I’ve found my family, I’ve found where I fit in.’ So I visited a lot of Outsider Artists in France, they were mostly elderly, and then I began work on my House of Dreams in 1999/2000.
At first it was purely decorative, but then it became a response to the death of my partner Donald, and when – two years into it – both my parents died, I found that difficult to deal with. So my work changed and it became a way of grieving and dealing with loss – because I didn’t have a family this became my way of life. I want to leave something behind. Since then I met Michael, ten years ago, and he’s been very supportive. It’s important to have someone on your side.
I’m from the North and I found it difficult to put down roots in London, so I live in this safe house behind a high wall with a gate where I feel free to be me. All the objects in my house carry a meaning or memory for me and many are from places I consider sacred, like Cornwall, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid & Amsterdam.
The design has a South American style because I’m in touch with spirits from a former life when I was a grave digger in Oaxaca. I’ve been to Mexico to visit the place where I was born.
I’m always amazed that anybody wants to come to my House of Dreams but I love it. People come round all the time to visit and I’ve made a living out of being me. I get up and I’m me. I’m me everyday!”
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David O’Mara’s Spitalfields
I have published many pictures of renovations of old houses in Spitalfields but David O’Mara‘s candid photography reveals the other side of these stories, recording the back-breaking labour and human toil that is expended upon these endeavours
“For the past ten years I have worked as a painter & decorator in London, both as a means of surviving and also funding my artistic practice – but the roles of artist & decorator are not always easily reconciled, time demands and budgets often lead to a conflict of interests.
My work is described as ‘restoration,’ though I began to question the truth of this description. From the beginning, you strip back the layers of previous occupants. Cupboards, doors and walls that were later additions are all removed. At every turn and removal you notice the evidence of previous lives, all to be erased and replaced with freshly painted blank surfaces – everything is pared back to the tabula rasa.
This has a resonance with my own experience: the daily repetition of tasks erodes memory, time is distilled into but a few recollections. I started photographing my working life as a way of recording the disappearing history of the houses and also to combat the erosion of memory through the repetition of work.” – David O’Mara
Photographs copyright © David O’Mara
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Inside The Model Of St Paul’s
Simon Carter, Keeper of Collections at St Paul’s
In a hidden chamber within the roof of St Paul’s sits Christopher Wren’s 1:25 model of the cathedral, looking for all the world like the largest jelly mould you ever saw. When Charles II examined it in the Chapter House of old St Paul’s, he was so captivated by Wren’s imagination as manifest in this visionary prototype that he awarded him the job of constructing the new cathedral.
More than three hundred years later, Wren’s model still works its magic upon the spectator, as I discovered last week when I was granted the rare privilege of climbing inside to glimpse the view that held the King spellbound. While there is an austere splendour to the exterior of the model, I discovered the interior contains a heart-stopping visual device which was surely the coup that persuaded Charles II of Wren’s genius.
Yet when I entered the chamber in the triforium at St Paul’s to view the vast wooden model, I had no idea of the surprise that awaited me inside. Almost all the paint has gone from the exterior now, giving the dark wooden model the look of an absurdly-outsized piece of furniture but, originally, it was stone-coloured with a grey roof to represent the lead.
At once, you are aware of significant differences between this prototype and the cathedral that Wren built. To put it bluntly, the model looks like a dog’s dinner of pieces of Roman architecture, with a vast portico stuck on the front of the dome of St Peter’s in the manner of those neo-Georgian porches on Barratt Houses. Imagine a fervent hobbyist chopping up models of relics of classical antiquity and rearranging them, and this is the result. It is unlikely that this design would even have stood up if it had been built, so fanciful is the conception. Yet the long process of designing a viable structure, once he had been given instruction by Charles II, permitted Wren to reconcile all the architectural elements into the satisfying whole that we know today.
I had been tempted to visit the cathedral by an invitation to go inside the model but – studying it – I could not imagine how that could be possible. I could not see a way in. ‘Perhaps one end has hinges and Charles II crawled in on his hands and knees like a child entering a Wendy House?,’ I was thinking, when Simon Carter, Keeper of Collections opened a door in the plinth and disappeared inside, gesturing me to follow. In blind faith, I dipped my head and walked inside.
When I stood up, I was beneath the dome with the floor of the cathedral at my chest height. There was just room for two people to stand together and I imagined the unexpected moment of intimacy between the Monarch and his architect, yet I believe Wren was quietly confident because he had a trick up his sleeve. From the inside, the drama of the architecture is palpable, with intersecting spaces leading off in different directions, and – as your eyes accustom to the gloom – you grow aware of the myriad refractions of light within this intricately-imagined interior.
Just as Wren directed Charles II, Simon Carter told me to walk to the far end of the model and sit on the bench placed there to bring my eye level down to the point of view of someone entering through the great west door. Then Simon left me there inside, just as I believe Wren left Charles II within the model, to appreciate the full effect.
I have no doubt the King was thrilled by this immersive experience, which quickly takes on a convincing reality of its own once you are alone. Charles II discovered himself confronted by a glorious vision of the future in which he was responsible for the first and greatest classically-designed church in this country, with the largest dome ever built. Such is the nature of the consciousness-filling reverie induced by sitting inside the model that the outside world recedes entirely.
How astonishing, once you have accustomed to the scale of the model, when a giant face appears filling the east window. I could not resist a gasp of wonder when I saw it and neither – I suggest – could Charles II when Christopher Wren’s smiling face appeared, grinning at him from the opposite end of the nave, apparently enlarged to twenty-five times its human scale.
In these unforgettable circumstances, the King could not avoid the realisation that Wren was a colossus among architects and – unquestionably – the man for the job of building the new St Paul’s Cathedral. The model had worked its spell.
Behold, the largest jelly mould in the world!
The belfry that was never built
The single portico that was replaced by a two storey version
Just a few fragments of paintwork remain upon the exterior
Original paintwork can be seen inside the model
Charles II’s point of view from inside the model
‘How astonishing, once you have accustomed to the scale of the model, when a giant face appears filling the east window.’
Click here to book for a tour of the Triforium at St Paul’s Cathedral
Click here for events commemorating the 350th Anniversary of the Great Fire
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Kirby’s Eccentric Museum
I am very grateful to have met collector Mike Henbrey because among the wonders he introduced me to was Kirby’s Eccentric Museum
John Biggs was born in 1629 and lived in Denton in the county of Bucks in a cave
This wonderful boy, who in early age outstripped all former calculators, was born in Morton Hampstead on 14th June 1806
In Mme Lefort the sexes are so equally blended that it is impossible to say which has predominance
This gentleman was a bookseller in Upper Marylebone St, remembered today as Shelley’s bookseller
The parachute here represented was used by Monsieur Garnerin at his ascension in London
Thomas Cooke was born in 1726 at Clewer near Windsor as the son of an itinerant fiddler
Robert Coates Esq, commonly called ‘The Amateur of Fashion’
The giant Basilio Huaylas came in May 1792 from the town of Joa to Lima and publicly exhibited himself
Mr James Toller and Mr Simon Paap are presumed to be the tallest shortest men in the kingdom
Miss McAvoy, who distinguished colours by the touch, was born in Liverpool on 28th June 1800
Mr Hermans Bras, designated the gigantic Prussian Youth, was born at Tecklenbourg in 1801
Thomas Laugher, aged 111 years, and known by the name of Old Tommy
Petratsch Zortan in the 185th year of his age, he died on 5th January 1724
John Rovin in the 172nd & Sarah his wife in the 164th year of their respective ages
The turnip represented in the plate grew in 1628
The parsnip here represented grew in 1742
The radish here represented was found in 1557 in Haarlem
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Mike Henbrey, Collector of Books, Epherema & Tools
Vinegar Valentines for Bad Tradesmen
So Long, Maurice Franklin
Only this week have I learnt the sad news of the death of Maurice Franklin, the wood turner, on 5th November last year aged ninety-eight. Over the years, Maurice’s story has proved to be one of the most popular that I have ever published on Spitalfields Life and I am proud to have to met him, a legend in wood turning. Last year, Maurice made newel posts for the staircase in my house and now I think of him every time I walk up and down stairs.
If you were to rise before dawn on Christmas Eve, and walk down the empty Hackney Rd past the dark shopfronts in the early morning, you would very likely see a mysterious glow emanating from the workshop at the rear of number forty-five where spindles for staircases are made. If you were to stop and press your face against the glass, peering further into the depths of the gloom, you would see a shower of wood chips flying magically into the air, illuminated by a single light, and falling like snow into the shadowy interior of the workshop where wood turner Maurice Franklin, who was born upstairs above the shop in 1920, has been working at his lathe since 1933 when he began his apprenticeship.
In the days when Maurice started out, Shoreditch was the centre of the furniture industry and every premises there was devoted to the trade. But it has all gone long ago – except for Maurice who has carried on regardless, working at his lathe. Now at ninety-one years old, being in semi-retirement, Maurice comes in a few days each week, driving down from North Finchley in the early hours to work from four or five, until eight or nine in the morning, whenever he fancies exercising his remarkable talent at wood turning.
Make no mistake, Maurice is a virtuoso. When rooms at Windsor Castle burnt out a few years ago, the Queen asked Maurice to make a new set of spindles for her staircase and invited him to tea to thank him for it too. “Did you grow up in the East End?” she enquired politely, and when Maurice nodded in modest confirmation of this, she extended her sympathy to him. “That must have been hard?” she responded with a empathetic smile, although with characteristic frankness Maurice disagreed. “I had a loving family,” he told her plainly, “That’s all you need for a happy childhood, you don’t need palaces for that.”
Ofer Moses who runs The Spindle Shop – in the former premises of Franklin & Sons – usually leaves a list for Maurice detailing the work that is required and when he returns next morning, he finds the completed wood turning awaiting him, every piece perfectly achieved. But by then Maurice will already be gone, vanished like a shade of the night. So, in order to snatch a conversation with such an elusive character, a certain strategy was necessary which required Ofer’s collaboration. Early one frosty morning recently, he waited outside the shop in his car until I arrived, and then, once we had checked that there was a light glimmering inside the shop, he unlocked the door and we went in together to discover the source of the illumination. Sure enough, the wood chips were flying, accompanied by the purr of the motor that powered the lathe, and hunched over it was a figure in a blue jacket and black cap, liberally scattered with chips and sawdust. This was Maurice.
Unaware of our presence, he continued with his all-engaging task, and we stood mesmerised by the sight of the master at work, recognising that we were just in time to catch him as he finished off the last spindles to complete a pristine set. And then, as he placed the final spindle on the stack, Maurice looked up in surprise to see us standing there and a transformation came upon him, as with a twirl he removed his overall and cap, sending a shower of wood chips fluttering. The wood turner that we saw hunched over the lathe a moment before was no more and Maurice stood at his full height with his arms outstretched, assuming a relaxed posture with easy grace, as he greeted us with a placid smile.
“This firm was the wood turning champion of Britain in 1928,” announced Maurice with a swagger. “Samuel, my father, had been apprenticed in Romania and was in the Romanian army for two years before he came here at the beginning of the twentieth century, and then he served in the British Army in the 14/18 war before he opened this place in 1920. He had been taught by the village wood worker in Romania, they made everything from cradles to coffins. All the boys used to sleep on a shelf under the bench then.”
Maurice told me he was one of a family of twelve – six boys and six girls – and he indicated the mark in the floor where the staircase once ascended to the quarters where they all lived. “I started when I was thirteen, I’ve still got my indenture papers” he informed me conscientiously, just in case I wanted to check the veracity of his claim, “I took to it from the start. It’s creative and at the end of the day you see what you’ve made. I’m proud of everything I do or I wouldn’t do it.”
In spite of his remarkable age, Maurice’s childhood world remains vivid to him. “Here in Shoreditch, ninety per cent were Jewish and the ones that weren’t were Jewish in their own way. Over in Hoxton, they’d take your tie off you when you arrived and sell it back to you when you left – but now you couldn’t afford to go there. In 1925, you could buy a house in Boundary St for £200, or you could put down a pound deposit and pay the rest off at three shillings a week. I was born here in 1920 and I went to Rochelle School – They won’t remember me.”
The only time Maurice left his lathe was to go and fight in World War II, when although he was offered war work making stretcher poles, he chose instead to enlist for Special Operations. Afterwards, Franklin & Sons expanded through acquiring the first automatic lathe from America, and opening a factory in Hackney Wick to mass-produce table legs. “Eventually we closed it up because everyone was getting older, except me.” quipped Maurice with a tinge of melancholy, as the last of his generation now, carrying the stories of a world known directly only to a dwindling few.
Yet Maurice still enjoys a busy social calendar, giving frequent lectures about classical music – the other passion in his life. “I especially like Verdi, Puccini and Rossini,” he declared, twinkling with bright-eyed enthusiasm, because having made chairs for the Royal Opera House he is a frequent visitor there. “I like all music except Wagner. You’ll never hear me listening to Wagner, because he was Hitler’s favourite composer.” he added, changing tone and catching my eye to make a point. A comment which led me to enquire if Maurice had ever gone back to Romania in search of his roots. “I’ve got no family there, they were all wiped out in the war. My father brought his close relatives over, but those that stayed ended up in Auschwitz.” he confided to me, with a sombre grimace, “Now you know why I wanted to go to war.”
And then, after we had shared a contemplative silence, Maurice’s energy lifted again, pursuing a different thought, “I remember the great yo-yo craze of the nineteen thirties,” he said, his eyes meeting mine in excitement, “We worked twenty-four hours a day.”
“What’s the secret?” I asked Maurice, curious of his astonishing vitality, and causing him to break into a smile of wonderment at my question. “All you’ve got to do is keep on living, and then you can do it. It isn’t very difficult.” he said, spreading his arms demonstratively and shaking his head in disbelief at my obtuseness. “Are you happy?” I queried, provocative in my eagerness to seize this opportunity of learning something about being a nonagenarian. “I’ll tell you why I am happy,” said Maurice, with a grin of unqualified delight and raising one hand to count off his blessings, “I’ve got a wonderful family and wonderful children. I’ve been successful and I’ve got an appetite for life, and I’ve eaten every day and slept every night.” Maurice was on a roll now. “I was going to write a book once,” he continued, “but there’s no time in this life. By the time you know how to live, it’s over. This life is like a dress rehearsal, you just make it up as you go along. One life is not enough, everyone should live twice.”
There was only one obvious question left to ask Maurice Franklin, so I asked it, and his response was automatic and immediate, with absolute certainty. “Yes, I’d be a wood turner again.” he said.
“I wake up every day and I stretch out my arms and if I don’t feel any wood on either side, then I know I can get up.”
Maurice’s handiwork.
Ofer Moses, proprietor of the The Spindle Shop
Maurice’s service book from World War II.
Maurice as a young soldier, 1941
Maurice as a child in the nineteen twenties, in the pose he adopts leaning against his lathe today.
The figure on the left is Maurice’s father Samuel in the Romanian army in the eighteen nineties.
Samuel Franklin as proprietor of Franklin & Sons, Shoreditch.
Maurice Franklin
Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
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