Amelia Gregory, Amelia’s Magazine
Amelia Gregory
Amelia Gregory, the presiding spirit of Amelia’s Magazine, has lived in Spitalfields for fourteen years in a hidden house enfolded with greenery at the far end of Bacon St, where Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven & I paid her a visit recently.
Once we sat down at the small table in her modestly-sized kitchen, I realised a kind of miracle had happened in that house. For ten years, Amelia ran her popular biannual magazine from here, creating a publication with an international reputation yet without any Media Corporation behind her – just a magnanimous spirit, a keen critical eye and a capacity for working long hours. She proved that an individual could produce a successful magazine with a strong personal identity and reach a wide audience by selecting and publishing the work of new artists, illustrators and designers that no-one had seen before. It was an inspired idea executed with panache and an impressively selfless aspiration, delivering glory with little financial reward – but launching a whole new wave of illustrators into the world.
“I just thought I should start my own magazine,” admitted Amelia, making it sound like a simple task.“At that time, Amelia was a really unusual name,” she revealed with a blush, “I didn’t know that in ten years it would be the most popular name for babies in the country!”
“I wanted it be an exploration of the things I liked and I wanted to make it clear that it was personal,” she told me, recalling her former frustration while working in the print media industry and the moment in 2004 when she launched out into uncharted territory, A vindication of this policy came with second issue when Amelia put the work of an artist working in the unusual medium of paper-cuts upon the cover, delivering early prominent recognition for Rob Ryan.
In front of us was a neat stack of tn magazines, representing five years’ work. “I never wanted to be big, I just wanted to prove you can do your own thing,” she confessed to me, slightly in awe of the pile sitting between us, “I always said I was only going to do ten years, and doing two issues a year was exhausting. I always feel you should do something until it’s really good and then stop – but now I love it and I can’t let it go.”
Since calling a halt to her printed magazine and moving online, Amelia has published two books that anthologise the best of contemporary illustration, drawn from open submissions. More significantly, she now has a child and her two-year-old son persisted in claiming his rightful demand to be the centre of attention, even as we pursued our conversation.
In my endeavours, I recognise there is only a permeable boundary between my life and my writing, and Amelia revealed that her personal experiences colour her work too. Two late miscarriages led Amelia to confront how little we comprehend of the functioning of the bodies we inhabit and inspired the title of her forthcoming book, “That Which We Do Not Understand.” Already, she has amassed a stash of breathtaking illustrations and, for the first time, creative writing upon the theme of mysteries. There is another week before the deadline for submission on Sunday 16th November and you can find details of Amelia’s Kickstarter project below.
With a restless imagination and a tendency for working through the night, Amelia has single-handedly reinvented notions of independent publishing yet she is touchingly vulnerable when faced with the evident challenge of handling a boisterous little boy. “Maybe I was getting so involved in my magazine, I needed a child to remind me about the world?”, she suggested to me with a thoughtful grin.
Illustration by Daria Hiazatova
Illustration by Dorry Spikes
Illustration by Lorna Scobie
Illustration by Mateusz Napieralski
Illustration by Maia Ford
Illustration by Essi Kimpimaki
Illustration by Katie Ponder
Illustration by Yoko Furosho
Illustration by Cristian Grossi
Illustration by Sarah Tanat Jones
Covers of Amelia’s Magazine
Amelia & her son
Portraits of Amelia Gregory copyright © Patricia Niven
On The Bishopsgate Goodsyard, 7
Lizzie Flynn & Dolly Green
On Sunday November 16th at 4pm, I shall be introducing Horace Warner’s Spitalfields Nippers and reading some of the biographies of the children in the pictures at the Whitechapel Idea Store – admission is free and tickets can booked at Write Idea Festival website. There will be sign language interpretation at this event.
I shall also be showing the photographs and telling the stories at Waterstones Piccadilly on Wednesday 19th November at 7pm. Admission is free to this event too but tickets must be reserved piccadilly@waterstones.com
Lizzie Flynn & Dolly Green
In Horace Warner’s portrait of 1901, Lizzie has equanimity but Dolly appears tremulous, clutching the hearth brush as if about to return to sweeping the grate. They both seem preoccupied, yet they gaze intensely at the lens, aware that photography is significant experience which requires attention. Since Horace Warner labelled his portrait with their names, we have been able to trace some of the primary events of their lives and now it is impossible not to see this photograph in the light of the futures that lay ahead for Lizzie and Dolly.
Lizzie Flynn was living at 19 Branch Place, Haggerston, when she was nine years old in 1901. Daughter of John and Isabella Flynn, she had two brothers and a sister. By 1911, the children were living with their widowed father at 89 Wilmer Gardens, Shoreditch. Their place of birth was listed as “Oxton” in the census. On 9th May 1915, Lizzie married Robert May at St. Andrew, Hoxton. He died at the age of just thirty-four in 1926 and they had no children. Lizzie died in Stepney in 1969, aged seventy-seven.
Dolly Green (Lydia Green) was living at 31 Hyde Rd, Hoxton, with her parents Edward and Selina in 1901 when she was twelve years old. Dolly had a brother and sister who had been born before her parents’ marriage in 1881. Dolly married Edward Moseley in 1909 at St Jude in Mildmay Grove and they had two children – Arthur born in 1912, who died in 1915, and Lydia born in 1914, who lived less than a year. In 1959, Edward Mosley remarried after his wife’s death.
Samuel Stevens, Lizzie Flynn, Dolly Green and three Compton girls
[youtube WOJlJ0qfFrs nolink]
You may also like to read about
Annie & Nellie Lyons by Horace Warner
Wakefield Sisters by Horace Warner
On The Bishopsgate Goodsyard, 6
Adam Dant’s London Pocket Squares
Spitalfields Life Contributing Artist Adam Dant has designed these beautiful silk pocket squares for Drakes Of London, so I went over with him yesterday to the new Drakes’ factory in Haberdasher’s St, Hoxton, to take a look at his newly-realised designs which will be available from 13th November. Perfect for pulling from your top pocket when you wish to make a dramatic gesture, they are equally ideal framed upon the wall.
Museums of London
Where Money Dwells in London
Great Men of London
Club Land in London
Coming Soon – Writers of London
Adam Dant at Drakes of London
You may also like to read about
On The Bishopsgate Goodsyard, 5
Award-Winning Mosaic Makers of Hackney
Tessa Hunkin
You recall my friends the Mosaic Makers, who I have been following over the past year, since their triumph with the murals at Shepherdess Walk and at Pitfield St in Hoxton, and more recently up on Hackney Downs, where they have just completed their magnum opus – covering the entire open air theatre with a vast lyrical tableau of wild creatures. Now their work has received just recognition with the award of Mosaic of the Year by the British Association for Modern Mosaic.
Yesterday, I went up to Hackney Downs to congratulate Tessa Hunkin, the inspirational designer and team leader of the project, while she applied the finishing touches of grouting in advance of the opening celebration from 2-4pm this afternoon. Refreshments will served in the Park Pavilion which functions as the Mosaic Makers’ workshop and there will be a chance to view individual works by members of the team. This will be followed by an official opening by Councillor Jonathan McShane, with a display of model parrots and a performance in the theatre by young people from the nearby Nightingale Estate.
“It suits us to have our workshop here in the Pavilion on Hackney Downs,” Tessa confided to me, “because the park attracts people from the local community who feel excluded through illness, loneliness or other problems – they see a friendly place and they come and join us making mosaics.”
Now the Mosaic Makers have developed their expertise and established their workshop, they are eagerly looking for their next project in the East End. “We like to do big mosaics, it inspires us to work on an epic scale,” Tessa admitted to me recklessly. So the burning question is – Who want to commission the Mosaic Makers next?
The first visitors arrive to admire the completed mosaics
The model for the design
All are invited to the opening celebration at the Pavilion on Hackney Downs today 2-4pm
You may also like to read about
