At Ezra Street Market
Rambling round the markets of the East End has long been one of my favourite pastimes. It is a curious terrain, a constantly shifting landscape, with the potential for new discoveries ever present. So I was delighted when Spitalfields Life contributing photographer Jeremy Freedman sent me this set of six portraits of traders from Ezra St Market that he took last Sunday. He stumbled upon it in the early morning after taking Columbia Rd portraits, and this is his note that accompanied the pictures,“As dawn broke this morning, I found myself coffee less and in need of nicotine, so I followed my nose. In a lovely yard off Ezra St is quite possibly the friendliest market I ever ventured into. I couldn’t help myself. I was flashed up and at war with the rising sun – notice the crisp Autumn sky!” Captivated by the appeal of these spontaneous portraits, I set out to find the subjects for myself.
This the alluring Renee Duffy, a Hoxton native who brings a certain delicate movie star glamor to the market, which occupies a modest yard hidden behind a battered corrugated iron fence, nestling beneath old workshops and warehouses. As I took her thin cold hand in mine to warm it, she batted her eyelashes delightedly and welcomed me to her cherished market which she shares with just a handful of other select traders. “Late in life I decided to do it,” she admitted flirtatiously, while gesturing to her stock of fine galvanised steel watering cans and planters, before confiding to me in a whisper,“Hoards of people want to have stalls in here, there’s over a hundred on the waiting list!”
This is Shaun Barnett, who has been here the longest, trading for the last fifteen years of the market’s thirty year history and presiding over it today with Falsftaffian largesse. “We all come here every Sunday as regular as clockwork and we all get on, that’s why everyone likes it.”, he explained from behind his stall piled with an eccentric mix of stock, including some rather underpriced early pearl ware and old ladderback chairs. “I’m looking for madness!” Shaun declared recklessly with a smirk, “I buy whatever I like and if it doesn’t sell, I have to live with it.”
This is Suze Hails who deals in antique textiles and linen. “I am a grandmother and a mother and a carer for my husband, so this is a fun day out for me coming here,” she revealed excitedly, “I came from Kenya originally to study Fine Art & Etching at the Central School of Art, but then before I got going I found myself bringing up three children.” A natural enthusiast, Suze brings her artist’s eye to the selection of vintage fabrics and knows how to wear a duffle coat better than anyone I know.
This is distinguished gardening writer Caroline Foley in her Sunday guise as a trader in old china, baskets and gardening equipment. “This is a sideline,” she told me, “since I spend so much time on my own writing, it is lovely to get out in the world meeting people.” Caroline has published nine books in the past ten years, and her latest, The Allotment Source Book is published today. She also edits “On Topiary” magazine for the European Box Hedge & Topiary Society. Yet I found Caroline most passionate about Ezra St Market, “In this bit, there’s great camaraderie. We all stick together through the good times and the bad.” she said. You can read Caroline’s monthly allotment column for the Observer by clicking here.
This is Ezra himself. Ezra of Ezra St Market, Ezra Quinn. Even from his demeanour, I surmise he is a gentleman of singular personality, quite possibly a raconteur. From his trousers, I also presume he is either a cyclist or a style eccentric, if not both. The fancy silk scarf and wonderfully weathered fishing jacket are characteristic of the swanky hauteur with which he wields his cigarette. A dealer in Peruvian knitwear and metal curios, carriage lamps, scales and cameras, Mr Quinn remains an enigma to me – because I never met him. He was not there when I visited Ezra St Market.
This is Jo Watts & her daughter Mytle who deal in kitchenalia, comprising the old china, kitchenware and enamelled pots that fill both their stalls and their home in South Woodford. Be advised, Jo has the best selection of enamel teapots in the East End.“I love market life, I wouldn’t want a shop – except maybe when it’s raining,” confessed Jo with a good natured shrug, looking up through her plastic canopy. “I’m training to my daughter up and I let her have a little stall,” she continued, delighting in her chosen routine,“All week I go sourcing, in between going to the gym and being a mother and a wife. This started as a business but now it feels like a hobby rather a job.”
In a charismatic shabby yard in a hidden corner of Ezra St, a group of unlikely characters have created their own lively community that exists for just one day every week. Let me admit, I was innocent of the intrigues and gossip, but now I have introduced the appealing personalities of the leading characters in the weekly drama that is Ezra St Market, be sure to pay them a call next Sunday and introduce yourself.
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Columbia Road Market 57
There was a misty haze over the City and the distant sound of gulls as I left home this morning early to speak with the redoubtable Josephine Ferguson who celebrates half a century of trading at Columbia Rd this year. When I arrived she was nursing an injured foot that had been run over by a trolley, but as soon I introduced myself, she rose to the occasion, dismissing it as nothing, her glittering grey eyes lifting to meet mine. “I’ve been here since I was twenty-two and now I ‘m seventy-two,” she declared with a gracious smile, framed by her long straight red hair emerging from a knitted cloche hat.
Josephine’s first husband was Herbert Burridge, one of the proud family that above all others has defined the nature of this market for generations. And although he is no longer alive, Josephine is supported today on her stall by her two energetic daughters Denise and Daphne who hovered protectively as we spoke, and by her son Stephen Burridge who has a stall at the other end of the market. Additionally, Josephine’s grandson, who is in floristry, supplies the handsome gourds you can see in the picture, which are in season now.
Personally, Josephine specialises in cacti and succulents, as well as a range of ferns, bulbs, and cyclamen. “Mostly it’s a thing that men don’t sell, because you need to lay out a lot of money for a small profit. You’ve got a lot of your money tied up in them and if it’s severely cold you could lose them.” she explained cautiously, casting a maternal glance of affection over all her bizarrely shaped, spiky yet tender, cacti nestling in their trays.
Although in retirement, Josephine still gets up at five to come here from Enfield every Sunday, and in the week she helps out her son with his business.“It doesn’t seemed to have changed much,” she said, glancing around and reflecting on her fifty years trading in Columbia Rd, “My husband used to say that years ago they had to run with baskets on their heads to get a pitch. Somebody blew a whistle and they ran. Lady Burdett-Coutts set it up and she tried to get a railway here to help the traders. Now it can get a little petty, the market inspectors come along and say, ‘Move this, move that.'”
“I like it, we all like it.” admitted Josephine, confirming her statement with a smile, and contemplating the chaotic scene that surrounded her with sublime equanimity, “It gets you out and it’s an adrenalin rush. Even if you don’t make a lot you’ve achieved something and it gets you by for another week. The only thing I don’t like is the rain.” And then, as if Josephine had tempted the gods, with a wry grin Denise reached out her hand to the gentle raindrops that had begun to fall from the low cloud which hung over the East End this morning. Mother and daughter exchanged a momentary affectionate glance of recognition, before setting to work eagerly, preparing the stall for yet another Sunday’s trading, confident in their shared belief that the rain would pass presently.
Photograph copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Further Adventures of Ben Eine
I was sitting on the top of a number fifty five bus going along Old St recently when I saw the word “CHANGE” flash before my eyes in six foot high multicoloured capitals – it was Ben Eine at work on his latest painting – so I took the word as a literal instruction and leapt off the bus to join Ben and his friends in their sunny afternoon painting party. It was one of the last warm afternoons at the end of Summer, and Ben and his assistants were happily at work in the dappled light beneath the plane trees, where they welcomed me into their midst. And as the afternoon wore on towards rush hour, a certain drama accumulated as crowds of passersby, drivers and passengers on buses seized the opportunity to photograph and film Ben at work with their phones.
He was at sublimely at ease with all the attention and swaggering a little, his eyes flashing with absurd delight as he confided to me that Islington Council have actually granted planning permission for this painting. Eighteen months in the planning, it was commissioned by the Flavasum Trust to commemorate the life of Tom Easton, a twenty-two year old who was killed in a knife attack nearby in 2006. Placed here on this major thoroughfare, the painting is a direct appeal to young people to stop carrying knives and a call to everyone to help make our East End a safer place. Painted in lush vibrant colours, this is an inspirational work that will the confront millions who come through Old St daily, reminding us all of the possibility of change for the better.
Just a few weeks later, I was halted in my tracks in Redchurch St by another new painting of Ben’s that filled the whole of Ebor St with the text, “ANTI ANTI ANTI ANTI.” There was strident quality to these vigorous monochrome letters dancing across the uneven wall surface and appearing out of Ebor St to crowd my field of vision unexpectedly. At once, it set me thinking how two negatives make a positive – if you are anti-anti something it means you are pro it. Since there are four antis here in a row this adds up to an enthusiastic endorsement, even if superficially it sounds a little negative. Subsequently, I discovered the painting had been commissioned by the Anti-Design Festival that was held in the building in the question, leaving my theorising quite redundant.
Then a startling development occurred! I went back and Ben had painted “PRO PRO PRO” on the facing side of the street in richly flamboyant circus letters, commissioned by the advertising agency based in the building on that side, in response to the “ANTI ANTI ANTI ANTI” on the other side of the street. I stood in the middle of the road and looked from one side to the other and could barely believe my eyes. It was an exemplary example of the drama that Street Art can bring to the cityscape, making a side street -possessing architectural discontinuity and little identity – alive with compelling poetry. I watched people turn the corner and break into a smile as they saw the words, because just walking down this street is an exhilarating visual experience now.
Ben invited me along to a discussion about Street Art that was dominated by dealers pontificating about the market possibilities of selling work to new collectors – all missing the point which it was left to Ben to articulate, that this is an egalitarian form which only exists in the street and belongs to everyone. The very best Street Art enlivens the urban landscape by its presence, enriching the experience of all those who pass by, and this is exactly how the sly inventiveness of Ben Eine’s painting excels.
You can watch a film of Ben Eine painting in Ebor St by clicking here.
In Old St
In Ebor St.
Ben painted this number thirteen in Goulston St, Spitalfields, recently for the cover of a magazine. The owner gave Ben permission although his shop is not number thirteen.“They’re always going to get the mail for number thirteen now!” whispered Ben to me mischievously afterwards.
You may like to read my other stories about Ben Eine
The Return of Ben Eine, Street Artist
The Rise of Ben Eine, Street Artist
As you may know, Hackney Council are threatening to paint out Peter Roa’s wonderful Rabbit on the Hackney Rd, even though it was painted at the invitation of the owner of the building. If you would like to sign the online petition to save it, you can do so by clicking here.
At Truman’s Brewery, Spitalfields, 1931
There is a bizarre drama in the presence of the two brewers in overalls in this picture of the Truman Brewery in Brick Lane, looking like ants by comparison with the tall Coppers towering above, each with the capacity for boiling four hundred barrels of liquid. Can you even find the second brewer, high on a gantry up above his colleague busy stirring with a long pole? This is an illustration of the crucial stage in the brewing process when the hops are added to the boiling “wort,” as the malt infused liquor is called before it becomes beer. Yet in spite of the awe-inspiring modernity of this vision, you can still see the smallest of the Coppers in the top left corner within the shell of the seventeenth century brewhouse, itself enclosed by the vast brewery that grew up around it.
The tension between the heroic scale of the brewing operation and the modest figures of cloth-capped workmen scurrying around appears comically absurd today. The industrialisation of the process which this sequence of pictures celebrate is unremarkable to us, it is the presence of the wooden barrels and use of horsepower that we find exotic. This is a quaint English modernity which has more in common with W. Heath Robinson than Fritz Lang, while the agricultural illustrations of the cultivation of barley show a haywain reminiscent of the work of John Constable and stooks of corn upon the hillside just as you would see in a landscape by Samuel Palmer.
These intriguing pictures were created as a supplement to The Black Eagle Magazine, published by Truman Hanbury & Buxton in 1931, and I am grateful to Tony Jack, ex-chauffeur at the Truman Brewery for bringing them to my attention, because they grant a rare glimpse into the working life of the brewery that flourished here for over three hundred years. Like many in Spitalfields, I have long been fascinated to understand the precise activities which once occupied all the spaces that today are filled with new media companies, shops, markets, clubs and bars. Twenty years after brewing ceased in Brick Lane, the presence of that earlier world still lingers in these enigmatic utilitarian structures, even if their original usage is already obscure.
Let me admit that although these pictures were designed to elucidate the brewing process, to me they merely serve to romance the alchemical mystery of it even further. The text of the accompanying brochure contains some elegant obfuscation too, “Living things have ever an individuality of their own which defies mere rule of thumb government. Brewing is not merely an elaborate process of manufacture, but it includes in it the application of man’s brain power as scientist and technician, to guide the processes of nature, and to help understand something of life’s basic but baffling problems: food, health and clean surroundings.”
Compounding the surrealism, when you examine the sequence below, you will discover that the images at the beginning and the end are photographs while those within the brewery are mostly artist’s impressions. This may be simply because good photographs were not possible within the brewery, but it does give the impression that the brewery contained another reality, stranger the outer world and containing magical possibilities. A notion enforced by references to the use of the Jacob’s Ladder, the Archimidean Screw and the Dust Destroying Plant, while the language of “sparging” the “wort” evokes a universe as strange as anything Tolkien imagined.
Yet it was all real, a discrete society with its own arcane language and culture that evolved during three centuries in Brick Lane until it modernised itself out of existence as master brewer Derek Prentice explained to me. What touches me in these curious pictures are the small human figures – often hidden or partially concealed in the background – and the few artifacts on their scale, the sinks, buckets, barrels and jugs, which appear miniature beside the industrial scale brewing equipment. As mysterious today as a lost tribe, now fled from Spitalfields, it is my project this Winter to interview as many as I can of these fleeting characters and recreate this vibrant world for you from their testimonies.
Watch this film of Trussing the Cooper, an initiation ritual for cooperage apprentices.
A mixture of machinery and horsepower was used in the production of Barley in 1931.
Many East Enders travelled down to Kent each year to work as hop pickers.
Barley arrived at the Maltings, where it was hauled up to the top storey, spread out onto the floor and covered with water, turned daily for ten to twelve days, and thinned out when it began to germinate. Then the Barley was transfered to the Malt Kiln and heated until it reached two hundred degrees farenheit. The Malt, as it now was, came from the Kiln and was cooled before being stored.
On the right you can see the Malt is being delivered at the Brewery in Brick Lane, then elevated to the Malt Loft by means of a Jacob’s Ladder, which you can see top left, and distributed by means of a Screw to Malt Bins with a capacity of 12,000 quarters. At the bottom, you can see the Malt being transferred from the bins for the day’s brewing by means of an Archimedean Screw. The movement of the Malt caused dust to rise and thus a connection with a large Dust Destroying Plant was required.
The Malt was received from the Malt Bins in the Malt Tower and Weighing Room at the top of this picture, before being passed through the Malt Screens on the floor below to remove any foreign matter. Then the Malt was weighed again before going into the Hoppers beneath, from whence it was again lifted by suction to the Tower in the New Brewery.
This is the Malt Tower, from where the malt was distributed down through various Blending Hoppers and then ground in the Malt Mills below.
In the top picture, the Malt passes to the Grist cases ready for the Mash Tun. In the next picture you see the Mash Tun Stage. On entering the Mash Tun, the Malt was mixed with Liquor, allowed to stand and then “Sparged” at a rate of one hundred and twenty barrels per hour to create a substance resembling porridge. The resulting liquid, referred to as “Wort” was run off into the receivers you can see bottom left, labelled Ale and Stout, while on the right you can see the used Malt being removed by farmers. The Wort was then boiled in the Coppers, that you see in the picture at the very top, where the Hops was added.
In these pictures you see how the Wort was pumped from the Coppers through the Refrigerator Room at the top and then into the Fermenting Squares on the floors below where the Yeast was added and fermentation took place. Finally, the Yeast was collected in the vessel in the top right and the Beer was run to the Racking Square and put into casks.
Above, in descending order, you see the Bottle Washing Floor, the Bottle Filling Floor, the Loading-out Stage and then the barrels in the cellars ready for loading.
Read the story of how Michael-George Hemus & James Morgan are bringing back Truman’s Beer.
Tony Jack, Truman’s Brewery Chauffeur
“I was born in Balmoral Castle and I grew up in Windsor Castle …” Tony Jack told me proudly without bragging, “… they were both pubs in Canning Town.” It was a suitably auspicious beginning for an East End hero who was barely out of his teens before he joined the RAF and sent this picture home inscribed, “To Mother, Myself in a rear cockpit of a Harvard with the sun in my eyes. Love Tony.” Yet destiny had greater things in store for Tony, he was appointed to secret government work in Princes Risborough, where his sharp young eyes qualified him as an expert in photographic interpretation of aerial surveys, snooping on Jerry. If Tony spotted activity behind enemy lines, the information was relayed to our spies in the field who went to make a reconnaissance.
From there, young Tony was transferred to work in the Cabinet War Rooms deep beneath Whitehall where he barely saw daylight for weeks on end, taking solace in rooms lit with ultraviolet to induce the sensation of sunlight. Tony was involved in developing photographs of the blitz and making maps, but at the culmination of hostilities he was brought the document that ended the war, to photograph it and make fifty copies. With his outstanding eye for detail, Tony noticed that the date had been altered in ink from 7th May to 8th May 1945, and, with the innocent audacity of youth, Tony tentatively asked Winston Churchill if he would prefer this aberration photographically removed. “The Americans wanted the war to end on one date and the Russians wanted it to end on another,” growled the great man to the impertinent young whippersnapper in triumph, “But I got my way, May 8th!” And thus the correction duly remained in place upon the historic document.
When Tony told me these stories as we sat together drinking tea in Dino’s Cafe in Spitalfields this week, I did wonder how he could possibly follow these astounding life experiences when the war ended, but the answer was simple. Tony got a job as a chaffeur driving a Rolls Royce for the Truman Brewery in Brick Lane.
“There were seven of us and we were nicknamed the Black Crows on account of our black uniforms. We used to kick off the day by picking up the directors from railway stations and driving them to the brewery. During the day we used to drive them to and fro visiting pubs and there also was a certain private aspect, which we kept quiet about, taking their wives shopping. Most of the other chauffeurs had once driven delivery trucks for the brewery. They couldn’t tell you the names of the streets but they knew where all the pubs were, that’s how they navigated around London!”
“You couldn’t wish to work in a better environment than a brewery,” admitted Tony in rhapsodic tones, as he opened a worn plastic bag to show us his cherished cap badge and buttons that he keeps to this day. And that was when Michael-George Hemus (who is responsible for bringing Truman’s Beer back to life with his business partner James Morgan) got excited, holding up the rare badge to the light and scrutinizing it in wonder. And then, caught in the emotion of the moment and experiencing a great flood of memories, Tony launched into a spontaneous eulogy about the brewery, which gained an elegaic lustre in the description.
He told me the name of the head brewer was Gun Boat Smith. He told me the brewery had two black London taxis for visiting pubs incognito, registration numbers HYL55353 & 4. He told me there were two chefs in the canteen, one named Harry was a woodcarver who carved fancy work for churches and the other was a glass engraver who could put a painting into a glass and copy it onto the surface. He told me that John Henry Buxton asked “What regiment were you in?” and when Tony revealed he was in the RAF, declared, “Well, never mind!” He told me that a man called Cyclops was responsible for the “finings” which filtered the beer, as well as repairing the bottling girls’ clogs and distributing pints of beer to the delivery men in the mornings. He told me that the phone number of John Henry Buxton’s country home was Ware 2, a source of endless amusement when you asked the operator to connect you. He told me that the brewery staff manned the roof with buckets of water when the great Bishopsgate Goods Yard fire of 1964 sent burning cinders drifting into the sky. He told me that the brewery had its own customs officer because beer was taxed as it was brewed in those days. He told me that there was always a cooper on call night and day to make repairs, in case a barrel of beer split in a pub. He told me that the dray horses sometimes got out at night and wandered around which terrified him because they were magnificent creatures. He told me that there was priest who worked in the electrical shop who would marry employees. He told me that there was a man who was solely responsible for all the uniform badges and buttons, who was TGWU representative and also the Mayor of Bethnal Green. He told me that there was a rifle range below Brick Lane which still exists today and the cleaners refused to go there alone because there were so many rats. He told me that the shire horses were all sent to a retirement home in Long Melford. He told me that the brewery organised Sports Days and Beanos on alternating Summers. He told me that the Sports Days were held at Higham Park, Chingford, where they brought in circus acts to entertain the children. He told me that the Beanos were at Margate. He told me that they hired two trains from Liverpool St to get them there, and a paddle steamer to take them on a trip over to Folkestone and back for a sit down dinner at Dreamland. He told me that there was always plenty of beer on the train coming back. He told me that they were wonderful days out. He told me that Truman’s were unique in the sense that they were self-sufficient, you had no need to go outside.
One day, Tony was candidly given advance notice by the chairman, while driving him the Rolls Royce, that the brewery was being sold to Grand Metropolitan and chauffeurs would no longer be required. So Tony switched to working as a security guard for many years. “I know every inch of the brewery,” he assured me authoritatively. Then in 1969, Tony became a cab driver which he continued to do until 2007. “I retired just before I was eighty. I was happy because I was driving around and it was all I wanted to do in life,” he confided to me with a lightness of tone, revealing endearing modesty and impressive stamina.
All the astonishing details of Tony Jack’s vibrant description of life at the brewery were whirling in my mind as we crossed Commercial St and walked down Brushfield St together in the Autumn sunlight, before shaking hands in Bishopsgate. And then he hopped on a bus to Clerkenwell, where he lives, quite the most sprightly octogenarian I have met. It must be something in the beer.
A studio portrait of Tony from the nineteen twenties.
As a young man Tony acquired the nickname “Thumbs up!”
Tony is in the centre with his head down, working on a photographic interpretation of aerial surveys of enemy territory, as part of secret government programme in Princes Risborough during World War II.
The tax disc of the Rolls Royce that Tony drove for the Truman Brewery in the nineteen fifties.
The eagle on the left was Tony’s cap badge, the THB his lapel badge, along with two sizes of buttons, all from his chauffeur’s uniform. The eagle on the right was a truck driver’s cap badge and the key fob was from an ad campaign, “Ben Truman has more hops!” They are all laid upon a letter dated 29th June 1889, analysing the chemical constituents of the beer, that Tony salvaged from a skip when Truman’s were throwing out their archive. It concludes, “I do not think the beer is at all more laxative than any Burton beer would be in this weather.”
John Henry Buxton invited the members of the Brewery Angling Club to clear the weed out of the river at his estate at Wareside, Hertfordshire, in return for letting them fish in it.
Tony’s membership card for the Truman Brewery Sports Club dated 1st March 1959.
Tony photographed his daughter Janet on the roof after a Christmas party in the nineteen fifties.
Tony’s last day as cab driver in 2007, he drove Janet up to the West End for a shopping trip.
Michael-George Hemus of Truman’s Beer with Tony Jack at Dino’s Cafe, Spitalfields
Tony Jack
New portraits copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Martin Usborne, A Fox in Hoxton
At this time of year, as the shadows get longer and people hurry home through darkened streets, the foxes of the East End grow bolder, reclaiming their territory. Those that have acquired a taste for curry come streaming down Brick Lane in the early hours to pillage the bins, and throughout Spitalfields you may even see foxes during daylight hours skulking in the side streets, as familiar with humans as we have become with them. Consequently, I did not blink when I caught a glance of the first of Martin Usborne’s fascinating fox photographs. My immediate assumption was to admire his skill in capturing a rare moment – until I saw the other pictures and realised that a sly ruse was involved.
Now that digital manipulation of photography has become commonplace, there is an elegant poetry in the plain contrivance of taking a stuffed fox and placing it in the street, because a natural correlation exists between the still life of taxidermy and the frozen moment of a photograph. So familiar are we with photography as a record of an event that we naturally imagine the movement before and after the frame, an impulse that still exists even after we know the fox is immobile.
There is also the delight of complicity here, in observing how different people gamely participated in Martin’s project, when he spent three days wandering around with a dead fox that he rented from “Get Stuffed” taxidermy hire in Islington. (Martin was assured that the fox died of natural causes and was given to the taxidermist by the RSPCA.) The comedy of the undertaking is irresistible, even if it is underscored by the poignancy of this displaced creature returning to its urban habitat after death.
Athough foxes are common in the city, the surrealism of their presence never fails to startle, and these cunning photographs play upon this familiarity, pushing the limit of credibility. Since foxes appear to be as at home in the East End as we humans are, it would not actually be out of character for them to do any of the things shown here. It makes perfect sense to see a fox get cash from a machine and then hit the fried chicken shop. Equally, when I saw the picture of the fox with the girls in the cocktail bar, I could not help wondering if it was a hen night.
In reality, there is a large family of foxes that live in a secret enclave in the Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, which makes them perfectly placed to take advantage of the night life on their doorstep. Here in Spitalfields, I have become quite used to seeing foxes gambolling in my back yard. Although guests get excited to see the foxes emerging from the undergrowth seeking chicken bones whenever I serve dinner in the garden, this has become commonplace to me now. Sometimes in the Spring, fox cubs waken me with their cries while playing outside my bedroom window and if I go out at night to bring in washing from the line they prowl around me in the dark. Similarly, the neighbourhood cats appear to have entered into an understanding with the foxes, and I even saw Mr Pussy rubbing noses with a fox this Summer. And I shall never forget returning from the premiere of “Fantastic Mr Fox” to confront a fox on the street in Spitalfields at midnight and half-expecting him to ask, “How was it then?”
So you will understand why Martin Usborne’s clever fox photographs stuck a chord, they are only one step removed from actuality – and their subtle irony renders them as playful and engaging satires upon the absurdity of our curious inner-city existence.
Photographs copyright © Martin Usborne
You may also enjoy Martin’s pictures of Joseph Markovitch of Hoxton.
Martin Usborne’s current exhibition Dogs in Cars is at The Print Space, 74 Kingsland Rd, E2 8DL, until 9th November, Monday to Friday only.
All change at Crescent Trading
In the Spring, I visited Crescent Trading, the last cloth warehouse in Spitalfields, still operating in a way that Charles Dickens would recognise from his visit to a silk warehouse in 1851. Distinguished proprietors Philip Pittack and Martin White are clearance cloth merchants of the old school who have spent their entire lives in the industry, with more than one hundred and twenty years experience between them. For the past twenty years they traded from a charismatic old stable block in Quaker St, but now that the landlord has acquired planning permission to convert the building into a hotel, they are moving to an industrial unit across the road. These are momentous days for Crescent Trading, so I took my camera along to record the move.
I gasped to see the old warehouse, once packed to the rafters now cleared of cloth, and discovered Martin there, a dignified figure, ruminating like Hamlet in an empty theatre. Meanwhile Philip hauled a trolley piled with of bolts of cloth across the street outside, pink in the face with exertion and yet full of cheery resolve to make it to the new premises, where they have taken out a five year lease. “He’s seventy-nine and I am sixty-seven,” confessed Philip as he ran up a ladder with a roll of fabric over his shoulder, demonstrating the careless abandon of a thirteen-year-old, “When the lease finishes he will be eighty-four and I will be seventy-two.” At just two thousand square feet, the new warehouse, constructed of breezeblocks with a metal shuttered door, is half the size of the old one, so Philip has invested in a racking system which means he can stack the cloth higher, but requires him to climb more ladders.
Not many men at his time of life would take on this challenge, yet with heroic enthusiasm, Philip has embraced the whole process of hauling every one of all the thousands of rolls of cloth across the road manually and installing them in the racks, then taking them down and rearranging them to achieve a satisfactory arrangement. As Martin White declared later, deliberately and without overstatement, “Philip’s done a job which is a mighty one and it is quite incredible how it’s been done.”
Already customers are crossing the road, and they seem to like the new arrangement where everything can be seen at a glance. Crescent Trading is a treasure trove for small designers and design students who can buy cut lengths they could not get anywhere else, discovering rare high quality fabrics at a fraction of the cost they would pay at a mill. Even as Philip and I were talking, Mr Amecci, a designer in a snazzy deep blue serge trench coat with fur collar, fedora and forties moustache interposed. “Don’t write this up,” he begged me with winsome irony, “because I don’t want everyone to know! What I like about this place is that I can get things I wouldn’t get elsewhere, like mohair, mohair mixes and chinchilla at discount prices.” Then Matsuri, another cool-cat designer, entered in a Guy Fawkes hat with waist-length locks straggling out beneath, and eager for blazer-striped fabric. Regretfully, Philip had to send him back across the road to the old warehouse for it.
Simultaneously excited by the custom and frustrated by the circumstance, “We’ve come to the point of no return where we are running back and forth across the road!” Philip admitted to me, rolling his eyes and waving his hands in self-dramatizing resignation. Yet within a month, the move will be complete and so I persuaded Philip to take me on a sentimental tour, visiting the first floor storage space that once had a lift shaft big enough to bring shire horses up to be stabled. We passed a huge reptilian conveyor belt for bringing rolls of cloth upstairs – broken ten years ago, it will never run again – and we entered the vast empty warehouse, breathtaking in its lyrical state of dereliction, and possessing a poetry that no industrial unit can ever match.
These are emotional times at Crescent Trading. “I’m petrified,” admitted Philip when we were in private, revealing the nature of the passion that has driven him to manhandle every roll of cloth across the road, “We were happy. We had our feet under a table for twenty years. Now we eek out a living and times are very difficult. We have to work because all our money is sitting on the floor. This street used to be all small businesses, a trousermaker, three printers, a quilter and a dressmaker. I am angry that the council zoned this street as small businesses, and now it’s going to be just a hotel and a housing block.” And then, concerned that he might have lowered my spirits with this outburst, he put his hand into a box and slipped a bottle of whisky into my bag as I walked out the door.
Let me reveal, my sympathies are with Philip Pittack and Martin White for many reasons, not just because of the whisky, or because they carry the history of the textile industry in Spitalfields with them, but most importantly because they are two of the most soulful and witty gentlemen you could ever hope to meet. They are my heroes, wielding scissors and tape measures. Legends in the rag trade, they know as much as anyone could ever know about cloth and they love meeting all the young fashion students that come seeking inspiration. Whenever you visit Crescent Trading you will discover joy, because they sell it by the yard. Nobody is making a fortune, but everyone takes delight in celebrating all the varieties of fabric and the glorious multifarious human culture that attends it.
Thanks to sheer willpower, canny ingenuity and a superhuman expense of physical energy on Philip Pittack’s part, Crescent Trading is still here. Everything has changed yet nothing has changed.
Philip Pittack takes a last look at the warehouse where he stored his cloth for twenty years.
Philip sits upon the conveyor belt that broke ten years ago.
Philip personally manhandled every roll of fabric across Quaker St to the new warehouse.
Martin White contemplates the old premises, soon to be a hotel.
Philip arrives at the new warehouse on the other side of Quaker St.
The old warehouse.
