Hackney Mosaic Project At London Zoo
Tessa Hunkin works on her mosaic while lions prowl nearby
I accompanied Tessa Hunkin of Hackney Mosaic Project to the lions’ enclosure at London Zoo when she installed her masterpiece while big cats prowled around. Commissioned by the Zoological Society of London, the magnificent mosaic was the result of four months work involving around thirty people, with a core of fifteen experienced mosaicists, to create a centrepiece for the ‘Land of the Lions’ attraction at the Zoo.
The six panels of the mosaic portray the forest of Gir in Gujarat which is the origin of the lions at London Zoo. In Tessa’s design, Langur monkeys harvest fruit in the tree tops while Chital deer follow them below, scavenging windfalls and leftovers dropped from above. Yet this relationship serves a dual purpose for the Chital, since the Langurs see lions coming from far away, thereby warning the Chital when to take flight.
All through the winter months, the team at Hackney Mosaic worked in the pavilion on Hackney Downs, painstakingly glueing thousands of tiny tesserae to a large brown paper panel with Tessa’s design traced in reverse. Once this was complete, the panels were impressed onto a rendered wall at the zoo by Walter Bernardin, a mosaicist of lifelong experience, and the paper was removed to reveal the finished mosaic in all its glory, with the design the right way round.
It was a tense process, tearing away the backing paper without removing pieces of mosaic and then applying grouting. In fact, so all-consuming was this task that Tessa and Walter continued at their work without even noticing the lions prowling around in curiosity…
The team at Hackney Mosaic with the completed mosaic
Tessa’s final design
Photo composite of the work in progress, seen in reverse (click to enlarge)
The first panel installed at London Zoo
Mosaicist Walter Bernadin removes the backing paper and fixes the mosaic with grouting
The completed mosaic installed at London Zoo
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The Mosaic Makers of Hackney Downs
Stitches In Time At St Anne’s, Limehouse
Back in 2011, it was my privilege to interview Di England, the founder of Stitches in Time. Although Di passed in 2017, her creations live on and the magnificent quilts are now the subject of a retrospective exhibition which opens today from 10-4pm at St Anne’s, Limehouse and runs each Friday and Saturday from 10-4pm until September.
This is my portrait of Di England of Stitches in Time taken in 2011 with a tapestry based on the Roque Map of East London, 1746. It is just one of hundreds of elaborate textile pieces, created collaboratively and involving over three thousand people, that she has supervised.
As a consequence, the former Assembly Room of Limehouse Town Hall – in the shadow of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s St Anne’s, Limehouse – was turned into a kind of giant sewing box with a million reels of thread and scraps of fabric are neatly organised in containers. There you could find everything you could need for the embroidery, appliqué, batik, printing, painting and weaving that was involved in the creation of textile masterpieces which tell the story of the East End through stitching. In these works, intricate details reveal the contribution of individuals while the overall conceptions were a devised collectively, requiring critical decisions about the nature of the social pictures that result.
Inspired by the trade union banners that were once housed there when the building was a museum of Labour history, Stitches in Time was involved with all kinds of groups across the East End to create pictorial histories of communities, devised as endeavours to bring people together in the practise of making.
In a rare moment of repose, I was able to sit down with Di in a quiet corner of the Assembly Room – surrounded by piles of textiles and sewing paraphernalia – while she spoke to me of her own background and how it all started.
“I was an ordinary girl from St Albans. I had signed up for Social Anthropology because I was interested in people and instead I discovered it was all about statistics. But when I went to St Albans Arts College, I rang up my mother and said, “I found the right thing, first time.” Yet although I wanted to be an artist, I couldn’t think of a way to relate it to everyday life. We were from Yorkshire originally, but my father died when I was very young and my mother came South to earn a living. She was a primary school teacher, an educationalist with a passionate belief in the expressive arts.
I trained in painting & sculpture at the Bristol & West of England Academy and at Chelsea College of Art. At Chelsea, the textiles department was next door and I responded to that. My grandmother was a seamstress and two of my aunts were dressmakers who rode motor bikes in the nineteen thirties. Even as a child, I would collect leaves to make dyes and I gathered boxes of textiles.
I worked as a teacher at Newham in the early seventies before I joined Freeform Arts, a community arts organisation in Dalston and I found it refreshing because it was all to do with making, putting art where it wasn’t removed from everyday life. The question we asked ourselves was how could you create things that had relevance for people in their daily lives. At first, the Arts Council said, “We will fund the roses but not the dandelions.” though gradually they accepted the idea that art could be created where people lived, in the workplace and in schools, and they started a community arts panel.
Stitches in Time had its origin in 1993, I was doing a project at Beatrice Tate School in Bethnal Green, designing a mosaic, looking at the legacy of the Huguenots in the area. And I thought, “What were they doing here?” I had just finished designing a mural in Carnaby St in Soho which also had Huguenots, and I realised that both locations were gates to the city. It made me appreciate what refugees have contributed. I thought, “What can I do that everyone can participate in?”
At that time, I was setting up a print workshop in the Spitalfields Market and we made tapestries there that were a cultural history of the East End told by its people. We hung them up in the market and discovered there was huge demand for tapestries as community projects. By 1999, we received funding to create this organisation, Stitches in Time, with a special emphasis on local history. We moved into Limehouse Town Hall in 2001 and the next year we became a registered charity.
Bonnard, Chagall and Ingres were my inspirations, when I was a painter, but I have found a different way to make paintings in textiles now.”
The Tower of London by Bluegate Fields Infants School & Mothers’ Group.
St Dunstan’s by Members of St Dunstan’s Parish, Stepney.
Life Cycle of the Silk Worm by Shapla Primary School & Mothers’ Group.
The Jacquard Loom by Bancroft Women’s Group.
Jewish Wedding by Kobi Nazrul Centre.
Petticoat Lane by Heba Women’s Project.
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At Stephen Walters & Sons, Silkweavers
Hackney Mosaic Project In Regent’s Park
Creators of the mosaic, Lisa Werner, Jackie Ormond, Gallina Sheke, Robin Pritchard, Ken Edwards, Janice Desler, Katrina & Iris Harvey, Gabi Liers, Rada Stilianova, Rose Woolmer & Tessa Hunkin
I cycled over to Regent’s Park to visit my friends at Hackney Mosaic Project as they celebrated the unveiling of their masterpiece in the children’s playground at the Parkway entrance, Camden Town.
Designer Tessa Hunkin and her team have conjured an elegant circular pavement within a pergola where children play on rainy days. Divided in slices like a pie, the design features whimsical images of the wild creatures who inhabit the park desporting themselves at play in a pastoral scene – hedgehogs flying a kite, a heron with a hula hoop, a squirrel blowing bubbles, a fox balancing a ball on his nose, and more.
‘Our team took on the task with incredible enthusiasm and it was all finished in three months,’ explained Tessa. ‘Installation was delayed by the unsettled weather but, when we finally got three dry days, Walter Bernardin, the master mosaic fixer, was able to complete the job with his usual skill.’
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William Kent’s Arch In Bow
Wisteria is coming into flower across London now and this one in Bow is a favourite.
‘a curious vestige from a catalogue of destruction’
This fine eighteenth century rusticated arch designed by the celebrated architect and designer William Kent was originally part of Northumberland House, the London residence of the Percy family in the Strand which was demolished in 1874. Then the arch was installed in the garden of the Tudor House in St Leonard’s Street, Bow, by George Gammon Rutty before it was moved here to the Bromley by Bow Centre in 1997, where it makes a magnificent welcoming entrance today.
The Tudor House was purchased in a good condition of preservation from the trustees of George Gammon Rutty after his death in 1898 by the London County Council, who chose to demolish it and turn the gardens into a public park. At this point, there were two statues situated at the foot of each of the pillars of the arch but they went missing in the nineteen-forties. One of the last surviving relics of the old village of Bromley by Bow, the house derived its name from a member of the Tudor family who built it in the late sixteenth century adjoining the Old Palace and both were lovingly recorded by CR Ashbee in the first volume of the Survey of London in 1900.
The Survey was created by Ashbee, while he was living in Bow running the Guild of Handicrafts at Essex House (another sixteenth century house nearby that was demolished), in response to what he saw as the needless loss of the Old Palace and other important historic buildings in the capital.
Ever since I first discovered William Kent’s beautiful lonely arch – a curious vestige from a catalogue of destruction – I have been meaning to go back to Bow take a photograph of it when the wisteria was in bloom and, although for a couple of years circumstances conspired to prevent me, eventually I was able to do so and here you see the result.
William Kent (1685 –1748) Architect, landscape and furniture designer
Northumberland House by Canaletto, 1752
Northumberland House shortly before demolition, 1874
William Kent’s arch in the grounds of the Tudor House, Bow, in 1900 with its attendant statues, as illustrated in the first volume of the Survey of London by CR Ashbee (Image courtesy Survey of London/ Bishopsgate Institute)
William Kent’s arch at St Leonard’s Street, Bromley by Bow
The Northumberland House Arch was restored with the support of the Heritage of London Trust
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At The Garden Of Hope
We have raised over £6000 now but we still have a way to go.
Click here to learn more about Tessa Hunkin’s Hackney Mosaic Project Book
(Click to enlarge this portrait of those involved in making the mosaic)
It was my pleasure to take a trip to Tottenham to spend an afternoon at the Mental Health Unit where Tessa Hunkin and members of the Hackney Mosaic Project had been worked with patients and staff over fourteen weeks to create a mosaic entitled The Garden of Hope.
At the centre of the unit is a yard enclosed by buildings on all sides and lined with astroturf. Through discussion, the notion of conceiving of this space as The Garden of Hope arose and the heartfelt iconography of the mosaic was devised, featuring a pair of lions as representatives of the residents at the unit, with open gates and road leading to a white tower incarnating the possibility of reaching a better place.
Rosalie Simpson served rice and beans and we sat at long tables to eat our food in celebration of the joint achievement. Everyone was extremely proud of the beautiful mural that had been created and the collective desire that it represents in such poignant fashion, and – at this particular moment in a troubled year – it is a sentiment we can all understand.
Rosalie Simpson cooked up rice and beans in celebration of the completion of the mosaic
(Click to enlarge and study the mosaic in detail)
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Viscountess Boudica’s Easter
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On Easter Monday, we celebrate our dearly beloved Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green who once entertained us with her seasonal frolics and capers but now is exiled to Uttoxeter
She may be no spring chicken but that never stopped the indefatigable Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green from dressing up as an Easter chick!
As is her custom at each of the festivals which mark our passage through the year, she embraced the spirit of the occasion wholeheartedly – festooning her tiny flat with seasonal decor and contriving a special outfit for herself that suited the tenor of the day. “Easter’s about renewal – birth, life and death – the end of one thing and the beginning of another,” she assured me when I arrived, getting right to the heart of it at once with characteristic forthrightness.
I felt like a child visiting a beloved grandmother or favourite aunt whenever I call round to see Viscountess Boudica because, although I never knew what treats lie in store, I was never disappointed. Even as I walked in the door, I knew that days of preparation preceded my visit. Naturally for Easter there were a great many fluffy creatures in evidence, ducks and rabbits recalling her rural childhood. “When my uncle had his farm, I used to put the little chicks in my pocket and carry them round with me,” she confided with a nostalgic grin, as she led me over to admire the wonder of her Easter garden where yellow creatures of varying sizes were gathering upon a small mat of greengrocer’s grass, around a tree hung with glass eggs, as if in expectation of a sacred ritual.
I cast my eyes around at the plethora of Easter cards, testifying to the popularity of the Viscountess, and her Easter bunting and Easter fairy lights that adorned the walls. There could be no question that the festival was anything other than Easter in this place. “As a child, I used to get a twig and spray it with paint and hang eggs from it,” she explained, recalling the modest origin of the current extravaganza and adding, “I hope this will inspire others to decorate their homes.”
“Cadbury’s Dairy Milk is my favourite,” she confessed to me, chuckling in excited anticipation and patting her waistline warily, “I probably will eat a lot of chocolate on Easter Monday – once I start eating chocolate, I can’t stop.” And then, just like that beloved grandmother or favourite aunt, Viscountess Boudica kindly slipped a chocolate egg into my hands, as I said my farewell and carried it off under my arm back to Spitalfields as a proud trophy of the day.
Viscountess Boudica writes her Easter cards
“yellow creatures of varying sizes were gathering upon a small mat of greengrocer’s grass, around a tree hung with glass eggs, as if in expectation of a sacred ritual”
Viscountess Boudica turns Weather Girl to present the forecast for the Easter Bank Holiday – “I predict a dull start with a few patches of sunshine and some isolated showers. In the West Country, it will be nice all day with temperatures between sixty and eighty degrees Farenheit. There will be a small breeze on the coast and sea temperature of around fifty-nine degrees Farenheit.”
Easter blessings to you from Viscountess Boudica!
Viscountess Boudica and her fluffy friends
Take a look at
The Departure of Viscountess Boudica
Viscountess Boudica’s Domestic Appliances
Viscountess Boudica’s Halloween
Viscountess Boudica’s Christmas
Viscountess Boudica’s Valentine’s Day
Viscountess Boudica’s St Patrick’s Day
Read my original profile of Mark Petty, Trendsetter
and take a look at Mark Petty’s Multicoloured Coats
David Hoffman’s Easter In Stepney
A costume fitting
In the late seventies, Contributing Photographer David Hoffman documented the religious drama enacted upon the streets of Stepney around Easter time, recording astonishing images of magical realist intensity which feel closer to the medieval world than to our own day.
Gordon Kendall who played Jesus wrote this memory of his experience.
‘On a cold wet and depressing evening in April 1980, well over 100 actors, production crew and 2000 people lived through the experience of Our Lord’s Way Of The Cross enacted in the streets and estates of Stepney.
The excitement and challenge of playing Jesus really began on the Sunday before the event. Some of the actors were trying out their costumes and they looked very impressive.
Half way through the rehearsal, I needed to visit the toilet and so excused myself from the bodyguard of soldiers in costume. I knocked at the door of a flat. A lady came out and I requested the use of her toilet. She looked at me very oddly – she was a elderly lady – and she asked me who I was. I replied I was playing the part of Jesus and she flashed me a look which revealed she did not believe me, but she said ‘Come in.’
As I went through the flat I could see someone sleeping on the sofa in the lounge. When I closed the bathroom door, I could hear the woman waking up her friend and saying, ‘Nell, there’s a man in the toilet who says he’s Jesus.’ Then I heard some rapid movement and I could only wonder at the thoughts of this woman, struggling to her feet.
There was a knocking at the front door as I came out of the toilet and the two women opened it to be confronted by a fierce Roman Centurion in full regalia, asking if Jesus was in the flat. Fortunately, they relaxed into joyous smiles and it was kisses and handshakes all round as we departed.’
Roman soldiers
Jesus in flares
The arrest of the two thieves
Preparing for the crucifixion
A Roman legion marching
Pilate speaks
Roman soldiers at St Dunstan’s
Jesus consoles Mary
Bespectacled Jesus
Roman Centurion in regalia
Jesus gives himself up
The march to the crucifixion
The soldiers stripping Jesus of his raiments
Crucifixion courtesy of Whitbread
Behold, Jesus is risen in St Dunstan’s Church!
Photographs copyright © David Hoffman
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Click here to order a copy of David Hoffman’s Endurance & Joy in the East End 1971-1987
