Spitalfields Life

Don Keen, machine engraving with a pantograph

In Clerkenwell – an area of London where the engraving trade has been established for centuries, where Hogarth, Blake, Caslon and Cruikshank once practised their art – you may still find engravers at work today. Derry Keen & Co are a busy company who supply engraved trophies and undertake almost any manner of graving upon metal.

Don Keen will greet you from behind the front desk at this family business, started by his father Derek Keen and still trading under his pet name of ‘Derry.’ The shop is lined with glass cases displaying every kind of glitzy trophy you could imagine – from traditional silver cups, to statues, crests, plaques and medals, to those futuristic crystal awards that high-flyers stick on their shelves. Pass behind the desk into the ramshackle workshop at the rear and you immediately realise you are in a nineteenth century building. This is industry on a domestic scale, and the arrangement and contents of this cosy crowded space have evolved over the last thirty years to reach the optimal efficiency and comfort of working.

“Originally, my father started the business as ‘Rose & Keen’ in the fifties, they used to make copper trays and candlesticks in our front room in Navarino Rd, Hackney. My dad’s partner, Peter Rose, was a gun engraver and one day he shot and killed himself accidentally with one of the guns he had just engraved,” admitted Don gravely, revealing an unexpected danger of the trade, “In 1954, they had a shop in Grays Inn Rd and dad’s speciality was ‘bright’ cutting on silver cutlery, he was probably the best in this country. He and his brother Michael had a workshop off St John St and they opened this shop in 1977, with a hand-engraving workshop, a machine-engraving workshop and a small display of trophies.”

At this point, Don indicated a sturdy machine at the centre of the workshop, explaining that this was his cherished Taylor Hobson Model K Mark II.  “My career had been lined up elsewhere, but dad said, ‘Why don’t you come and work for us? We need someone to do machine engraving,” he revealed, positioning himself on a stool in front of the device, “I had played upon this machine in my school holidays, and I remember the first job I was let loose on, it was engraving the text of Paul Revere on these Liberty Bowls to celebrate the Bicentenary of the American Declaration of Independence in 1976. There were 1976 silver punch bowls of which I had to do the bulk and I did it very slowly and very carefully. I was eighteen years old.”

Then Don took the black round base of a silver cup and clamped it in place, before slotting a long panel etched with the alphabet into the top of the machine. With his right hand, he guided a pantograph over the etched letters while moving the engraving tool over the base with his left hand, cutting the letterforms into it. Then he removed the base and rubbed a ball of white wax over the words he had incised and they appeared, as if by magic, crisp and regular upon the dark surface.

“We have to be confidential about some of our customers and the work we do,” Don informed me, lowering his voice for dramatic effect, “Often, we know the recipients of awards, so we have to agree not to go out and place bets before they win. We do a lot of sport, we do Crufts and work for the Royal Family, we do Number 10 – regardless of who’s in power – and we do a lot of military and corporate trophies. We do all the Formula One trophies and we supplied them in a sixties style for the film ‘Rush.'” Behind this modest shopfront and unassuming showroom, I had unwittingly discovered a glamorous power house, where the rewards for many of life’s big achievements are minted.

Once I had grasped the essentials of machine engraving, Don led me into the shop next door which can only be reached through the workshop connecting the two premises. Here Don’s brother Michael and his partner Frida Wezel sat peacefully at desks, intent upon their meticulous work as hand engravers.

Michael looked up from the stack of old silver plates that he was engraving with a crest and launched into a monologue about evolving techniques and styles through recent centuries, “In the seventeenth century, if you make a slip, you leave it – whereas in the nineteenth century it has to be clear and regular, and then there is Mr Bateman’s ‘bright’-cutting in the eighteenth century, made to catch your eye.” And he passed me a fork decorated with a border of lozenges that glittered, serving both to illustrate his point and as an example of the work at which his father excelled. Yet on that day, Michael was working in the seventeenth century style, matching the quality of line in an existing motif with one of his own that possessed a subtle irregularity, almost like a pen script.

Across the room, Frida looked up from the silver goblet she was engraving with initials. “It takes ten years to learn,” she assured me, “four years to learn how to do it and another four years to learn to do it well.”

“Four to eight years,” interposed Michael, correcting her.

“Ten years to get your lines straight,” proposed Frida, growing excited and gesturing with her graver, “to get the steadiness of hand and get all your letters.”

“At college, I learnt how to hold a graver but here I learnt how to do engraving,” Michael asserted to me, “I learnt by doing it and by working alongside my dad.”

“Lettering is the most challenging part of engraving,” Don announced, halting the dialogue and bringing everyone to accord, “It is not just a question of engraving the letters but of getting the spacing even. We do a Classic Roman and a Classic Script. Lettering is what we specialise in.”

This drew nods of approval from both engravers, as they nodded sagely, returning to the absorbed silence that is their customary mode.

“We’re all going to retire in ten or fifteen years but there’s nobody coming into the trade to run the business in future,” Don confided to me, crossing his arms fatalistically as he watched the engravers at work, “We’ve tried – we’ve had three apprentices and it takes years to teach them but as soon as they’ve learnt how to do hand engraving, they are off to do it from their own front room.”

“There’s always going to be hand engraving,” added Michael, reassuringly, in an unexpected burst of romanticism, “People are always going to want their names engraved inside their wedding rings.”

“We do engraving as it has been done for ever, since steel tools were made,” confirmed Don in agreement, “Hand engraving hasn’t changed, there’s still lot that a computer cannot do accurately.”

“In corners of Clerkenwell and Spitalfields, there are small workshops that keep these crafts going,” Frida informed me confidently and I could not doubt her – because here was the evidence before my eyes.

Frida Wezel & Michael Keen, Hand Engravers

Frida Wezel engraves initials upon a presentation goblet

Michael Keen engraves a new crest upon an old silver plate

“Ten years to get your lines straight, to get the steadiness of hand and get all your letters.”

“At college, I learnt how to hold a graver and here I learnt how to do engraving. I learnt by doing it and by working alongside my dad.”

Derry Keen & Co, 65 Compton St. EC1V 0BN

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In the nineteenth century, artificial eyes were sometimes made of lead-based glass, so if the owner were to walk in extreme cold temperatures and then enter a warm room with a blazing fire, there was always a danger their eye might explode – a risk that, thankfully,  has been overcome these days through the prudent use of crystallite rather than glass.

This was just one of many memorable pieces of information upon the esoteric subject of glass eyes that I garnered when Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven & I visited David Carpenter, Chief Ocularist, at the Moorfields Eye Hospital in the City Rd this week. David and his team of four produce more than thirteen hundred eyes annually – each one hand-crafted and individually-painted – to replace those that get lost in the capital.

It may sound like an awful lot of eyes but David and his colleagues are so skilful that, if you were not looking for it, you would not notice the results of their handiwork. Such is their success in creating life-like eyes – David assured me – that you probably know people with artificial eyes but you do not even realise.

Yet there is far more to the work of an ocularist is than just technical expertise. “If people have to have an eye removed because they’ve had a tumour or a cancer, it’s akin to losing a limb,” David admitted to me quietly, “They put their life on hold – then, after surgery and the healing process, they come to me and I make the prosthetics. You give them an eye, but really you are giving them their life back. It can be a great moment when you give them their glass eye – often, they cry with joy and, sometimes, they give you a hug.”

As one who has wrought such transformations for the better in so many people’s lives – simultaneously a technician, an artist and a counsellor – David certainly carries his role lightly. “I make little model tanks, I made them as a kid and I’ve never stopped,” he confessed with a blush, revealing the early manifestation of his distinctive talent, “and when I applied for this job, I was able to show them to prove I could do modelling.”

“Let me get out my box of bits to show you,” David suggested enthusiastically, pulling a container from a cabinet that looked it might contain a sponge cake, only it actually contained a selection of glass eyes and pieces of rubber prosthetics attached to spectacles.

Glass eyes are not round like marbles – as I had naively assumed – but curved like sea shells, so they fit neatly under the lid and can move in tandem with their living partner. David makes a cast to ensure that the eye fits its owner perfectly and then paints the pupil with the patient in front of him, using his expert judgement to match it exactly. “An eye is more than just one colour, you’ll need to use two or three colours to get the effect you want,” he informed me, “You start with a little black disc and you paint lines outwards from the centre and these striations of different tones blend to create the colour of the pupil. In the States, they have tried to do this digitally but the effect is flat whereas building up the layers of paint creates a more three dimensional effect.” Then David pointed out how unravelled strands of red embroidery thread are used to create the impression of veins upon the white of the eye and grinned with pleasure as he studied the convincingly life-like result.

It was surreal to stand  in the workroom surrounded by lone eyes of every hue peering at us, yet this was David’s normal environment and the place where he is at home. “I just fell into it really,” he informed me with shrug and a gauche smile, picking up an eye and polishing it tenderly with his finger, “I was training as a dental technician, making teeth at a college in Hastings – because I planned to emigrate to Australia and work in dentistry – when I saw an advert for an apprenticeship on ocularistry. Once you have trained as a dental technician, the next step is to become maxillofacial technician – I can make noses, ears, fingers – in fact, any part of the body that might get accidentally severed.”

“I can’t make arms and legs though, there are other people who do that,” he qualified modestly, acknowledging his own limitations, “but I can reconstruct any part of the face that is missing including the eye.” And then he picked up the pairs of spectacles with realistic parts of facial anatomy, noses and eyebrows, attached and proudly explained they were particularly useful for older people who might otherwise mislay their replacement facial features.

“I’ve worked here for sixteen and a half years,” he said, turning contemplative suddenly and speaking as if to himself, “I’ve got patients that I first saw when they were little babies who are now grown up and still come back to see me – there’s some that are almost friends.”

Painting artificial eyes

David scrutinises his handiwork critically

A selection of prosthetic eyes

The white of the eye before the pupil is attached

A pupil before painting

The pupil in place

The finished eye emerging from the mould

Prosthetic attached to a spectacle frame

Polishing the eye

David Carpenter, Chief Ocularist at the London Eye Hospital

Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven

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