The Dog Roses of Spitalfields
Dog roses have always had a special place in my affections, recalling high Summer, deep lanes, tall hedges and the lush meadows of the English countryside. Even people who dismiss wild flowers as weeds recognise the beauty of the wild rose tumbling from the green depths of the hedgerow. There is a wanton extravagance to the wild rose that can produce a profusion of delicate flowers of the softest hue, glowing in the sunlight against the deep shade, even in the most inopportune conditions. I have seen them on quarries, cliffs, railway sidings and even growing out of the shingle at the beach.
As I cast my mind back upon other Summers, dog roses appear in all corners of my recollections. I have a treasured copy of W. Keble Martin’s “Concise British Flora,” with his botanical plate of the wild rose upon the jacket, undoubtably the most appreciated page of the book. At primary school we sang Cicely Mary Barker’s “Songs of the Flower Fairies”. My special favourite was the dog rose, “I am the flower that everybody knows, I am the English rose.” Even without pulling my mother’s copy of this book from the shelf, inscribed to her in 1936, “To Valerie, the little girl who loved all the flowers,” I can see the familiar spirit in question. A woman with fine cheek bones and a jaunty regal attitude in a silk dress of rose tint, wearing a garland upon her head fashioned from the golden stamens of a rose, reaching up to caress a cherished bloom. I never questioned how she was able to sit, so confident yet precarious, upon the stem of a briar surrounded by her beloved flowers, because that was the magic of the flower fairies. All these images, memories and emotions come to the forefront of my mind each year when I see the first dog roses of Summer. I stand and take them in for a moment, refreshing the picture in my mind for another year.
The commonplace sights of the rural world take on a powerful exoticism in the city and the humble dog roses of Spitalfields are rare phenomena to city dwellers, evoking the entire expanse of countryside that we forget, yet we know exists somewhere far beyond our London streets. There is another dimension to the presence of wild flowers here too, because these flowers remind us of those fields that once were here long ago, where residents of the City of London came to take rural walks and build country mansions, as both Elizabeth and Essex did in Petticoat Lane, and Oliver Cromwell did over in Clerkenwell. The colourful resurgence of the wild flowers speaks of all the long lost fields that gave Spitalfields its name. To see these few flowers here is a tantalising illustration of the richness of the meadows before the streets were laid.
I photographed my dog roses in Allen Gardens, between Brick Lane and the Spitalfields City Farm. This expanse of green now comprises the only field to speak of in Spitalfields, and as I set out on my botany field trip, it was full of sunworshippers, dog walkers, homeless people and alcoholics, all gambolling and disporting themselves upon the lawn in the manner of those shepherds and shepherdesses in the pastoral idylls.
Fifty years ago, the site of Allen Gardens was mostly streets and houses, though I believe there was a paddock for the dray horses from the brewery on this site. Today we are all thankful for this small patch of green that has been restored to us, though I wonder if perhaps the reason the wild flowers grow here is because some guerilla gardeners scattered seeds.
It feels shameful now to admit that my mother used to take me for walks through the fields in Devon to pick wild flowers when I was a child, though particular bunches remain vivid to me, and I shall carry them always in my mind’s eye, even years after the posies themselves have wilted away to nothing. I think of those bunches of celandines I picked on the banks of the River Exe, the primroses and violets at Chard, and harebells at Corfe Castle, especially. Although picking wild flowers might be seen as ecological vandalism today, it did ensure I learnt all the names, and somewhere I have an album of pressed specimens all carefully labelled with their species.
So, as I walked around Allen Gardens, I was proud to recognise buttercups, cornflowers, field poppies, ox-eye daisies, camomile, vetch, clover, white and pink campions, scabious, yarrow and herb robert, among many others that are extraordinary for a city park. I did not pick them, I photographed them for you instead. When I walked with my mother along the cliff path outside Weymouth, learning the names of the flowers, I never expected I should use the knowledge in London, but I am especially grateful to know their names now, because recognising the different species of plants keeps me in touch with the greater landscape beyond our urban enclave.
Andrew Coram, Antique Dealer
For several years now, the most interesting shop window in Spitalfields has been that of Bedell Coram, Andrew Coram’s antique shop at 86a Commercial St. Every single day, I walk past and always direct my gaze to discover what is new. I am rarely disappointed with lack of novelty, and sometimes I am astounded by Andrew’s latest finds and ingeniously surreal displays that are worthy of Peter Blake or Marcel Duchamp.
Over a year ago, I admired three yellowed newspaper hoardings in his window, Evening Standard: THE PRINCE: TOUCHING SCENE, Evening News Late Extra: MAN-HUNT IN LEICESTER SQUARE and Evening News 6:30: LONDON HIGHWAYMEN ON WHEELS. They were gone as quickly as they appeared. “Gilbert & George bought them,” Andrew told me discreetly, “They rang to say they saw them in the window and came round next morning to buy them. They don’t usually collect old ones, they just go to the newsagent across the road each day to get them new.” Clearly, Andrew has a well-deserved following, and as I have gone about my interviews, when occasionally I have admired a delft bowl or a corner cupboard in an old house, invariably the proud owner will say, “I got it from Andrew.”
Andrew is the youngest of eight children of an antique dealer from Plymouth who was born in 1900 and died in 1980, when Andrew was still a child. His father began in domestic service and started in the antique business after World War II when the country houses of Devon were being knocked down, creating a vibrant trade in china, furniture and paintings. “He knew how to speak to those people,” explained Andrew, vividly aware of the negotiation skills that are key to his profession. When Andrew was growing up, his father was trading from Carhampton, near Minehead in Somerset, and he remembers long Summer holidays hanging around the shop. “I think my poor brother spent all his time polishing my finger marks off the mahogany furniture,” he recalled fondly.
Today, Andrew Coram is a popular figure in Spitalfields, with trenchant humour, and a fluent lyricism that he indulges when speaking of his treasured discoveries. He is a poet among antique dealers, with a melancholy streak that he resists, yet exposes when he speaks of his motives. Sitting in a chair wedged between boxes of stock, casting his eyes around at all the beautiful things that he has surrounded himself with in his shop, Andrew revealed almost apologetically, “It’s not about the money, it’s about the way that some antiques speak to you. There’s a sense of loss every time you sell something you like, which I didn’t have when I started. I think I may have lost focus. My father never lost focus because he had to support six people. It’s easy to let the things take over. You hope to do something that continually generates itself, and inspires you, so that, as you are discovering new things, you are learning more and you accumulate knowledge.”
Who cannot sympathise with this conflict? It is the quintessential dilemma that cuts to the heart of the passionate antique dealer. The modest trader spends his time searching, using his ingenuity to find wonderful things, and learns to appreciate and understand their histories, as Andrew has done. Then he collects his treasures together, and all for the purpose of disposing of them to others.
Even though his father was an antique dealer and Andrew incarnates his occupation so magnificently that I cannot think of him any other way, he did not set out to follow in his father’s footsteps. Impatient of waiting for a lucky break as an artist, Andrew started trading his personal collection in the Spitalfields Market years ago, in the days when it was free to have a stall, and he made £75 on the first day. “When you start out trading, you feel you have achieved something the first time you buy a Georgian chest of drawers or a long case clock on a hunch and it proves to be right.”, said Andrew, relating a milestone on the career path. He claims he learnt everything as he went along, that he has no conscious memories of the trade from his childhood, but I think Andrew’s upbringing accounts for the special quality of his personal sensibility that he brings to everything he does. Andrew’s unique sense of tone, his distinctive style of dress that is of no determinate period, his instinct for seeking out such charismatic artefacts and the artful displays he creates, all these attest to his special quality as an antique dealer, born and bred.
Still ambivalent about how much he chooses to keep, Andrew admitted recklessly, “There’s a part of me that would like to have nothing!” So I asked him what drew him to things that he liked and he thought for a moment, assuming his grimace of rumination. “Things that have rarity value – that you might not see again. As I said, things that speak to you. Things of which there’s a sort of … clarity about what they are … a quietness about them, even a stillness.” he replied, searching for words beyond grasp.
Then his eyes lit up, as he thought of an example to illustrate his point, and held it up, in mime,“I found this tooth, a boar’s tooth, mounted in silver with the inscription upon the base ‘Roasted upon ye Thames Jan 15th 1715/6’ – I’m not selling it!” Once we had considered this treasured momento from a frost fair together, in another mime for my delight, Andrew produced a copper pie dish with words “Lincoln’s Inn 1779” upon it, folding his fingers as if to grip the sides of the invisible dish. Then, returning to the material world, Andrew passed me a tiny delft tea bowl in pale porcelain with Chinese figures on the outside and the softest blackbird egg blue interior. It was a mid-eighteenth century English tea bowl and as I cradled it in my palm where it sat so comfortably, he told me in triumph it was worth a thousand pounds. “Holding a delicate thing like that in your hand puts you in touch the past. – it’s the story that connects us.” he said, intoxicated by the magic of the bowl, and breaking into a broad grin.
I spent much of my childhood being taken around the country antique shops of Devon and Somerset by my mother and father, and the romance of these places and my parents’ delight at their finds remain vividly with me today. I do not know if Andrew’s path and mine crossed back then, but I do know that Andrew Coram has soul and his antique shop is a proper one, of the old school, where authentic treasures are still to be found.
You might like to watch Andrew’s film “Edge o’ Beyond” shot on Dunster Beach by clicking here.
Robson Cezar, Saludos Amigos!
This exuberantly glamorous figure, alive with animation and ready to run, is the Brazilian artist and Spitalfields resident, Robson Cezar, whom I featured last year when he exhibited his bronze sculptures. Now he is staging “Saludos Amigos,” for one night only at the Hanbury Hall in Hanbury St this Thursday. In 1942, Walt Disney travelled to Rio to make “Saludos Amigos,” a pop portrait of Latin America, and in the same spirit, Robson has gathered together South American artists in London to create a new “Saludos Amigos,” curating an exhibition as a representation of some of the cultures that comprise the continent today.
The East End has a special significance for Robson Cezar because it was here in 1969, that Helio Oiticica, exiled by the military government of Brazil, staged his “Tropicalia” exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery. This show introduced Tropicalia to the international art scene as the major Brazilian cultural movement of the twentieth century. Singers, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were also exiled, and the influx of Brazilians enriched the London scene of the nineteen sixties. Oiticica recreated a favela in the Whitechapel Gallery complete with a billiard table where local youths could come and play, though he found them to be a“tough bunch” – a quality which can only have added to the authenticity of the favela for visitors.
Helio Oiticica was photographed in Spitalfields in 1969, with a sheepskin coat slung across his shoulder, looking the picture of an exile in a foreign land of dereliction. “The swinging loneliness of the world,” he termed it. As a Brazilian, used to several showers every day, he was appalled by to discover that in England people bathed once a week, and turned down a room in Hackney without a shower because he would have to use the Hackney Baths. Yet in London, he and Caetano Veloso discovered the liberty to develop as artists that they were denied in their own country. They loved to travel around upon the top of London buses together and Caetano Veloso wrote a ballad of freedom that began, “Walking down Portobello Road to the sound of Reggae, I’m alive!”
Robson Cezar was born in a favela in 1967, where he grew up listening to the music of Tropicalia that incarnated the spirit of liberation which arose at this time. His story is quite different to that of Helio Oiticica, yet equally dramatic. Once Robson’s elder brother and sister crossed illegally into the USA, he managed to obtain a visa as an artist to show a picture in an exhibition in New York. With remarkable courage and presence of mind, he stayed on for eight years, earning a living as a painter and decorator, while taking part-time courses at The Art Students’ League where exile George Grosz had studied, over half a century earlier. Like any of the millions of illegal aliens there, Robson could have been deported without notice, if stopped by the police, yet, through hard work and tenacity, he managed to thrive until the events of 9/11 took away his income.
A chance meeting led to the opportunity of a personal sponsorship, and in 2002 Robson came to the UK where he spent five years in art education, culminating in a Sculpture Fellowship at Chelsea College of Art last year. Robson’s personal project is to create a new “Tropicalia” that explores his experience as an artist living outside his mother country. “Everything is a product of my journey to this place,” he says plainly, rolling his deep brown eyes in emphasis. Calling himself a sculptor, yet working in a variety of media, Robson makes vivid bronze sculptures in a classical style that Rodin would recognise, alongside all kinds of pictures and short films.
“I choose to see Tropicalia as a cultural salad where anything can be mixed,” explained Robson, turning contemplative and outlining his personal manifesto, “I have lived from the generation of Helio Oiticica and Caetano Veloso and I am the product of it. To understand that I am the inheritor of their works and ideas fills me with power and energy as an artist. It allows me to disregard the idea that I am an artist from the “margins” and enables me to place myself at the centre of my world. This is what allows me to think I can create my own interpretation of Tropicalia, here and now, because like Helio Oiticica, art is a means of survival for me.”
In “Saludos Amigos,” Robson is showing a selection of his intricate and witty bottlecap pictures, using caps collected by Sandra Esqulant of The Golden Heart in Commercial St. These beautiful works use thousands of bottlecaps to create mind-boggling trompe l’oeil effects that replicate something of the experience of drinking the contents of the bottles. With song titles or names as simple texts, the poverty of materials in these pictures is directly in contrast to the richness and intriguing sophistication of the effect, which can be affectionate, comic or disorienting by turns.
Of especial interest is the picture he created as a tribute to Sandra Esqulant, the beloved mother figure to all East End artists, exhibited here for the first time. Using bottlecaps from The Golden Heart, Robson made a sparkly golden heart with her name across it, expressing the affection of all those in Spitalfields, and presented to her as a gesture of consolation at the time her husband Dennis died last year.
Forty years on, Robson Cezar has discovered a different East End to the place that Helio Oiticica knew. Taking the opportunity of all the galleries here today, Robson stages several shows each year, famous for the diversity of art and free-flowing caipirinhas that turn the openings into high-spirited parties. And I am sure “Saludos Amigos” will be no exception tomorrow, because, after the long journey he made to get to this point, Robson Cezar has plenty to celebrate.
From the song “Splish Splash” by Roberto Carlos
Helio Oiticica, Spitalfields 1969
Robson Cezar, Spitalfields 2009
A tribute to Sandra Esqulant, landlady of The Golden Heart
Robson & Sandra
You may like to visit Robson’s website to follow his new work www.robsoncezar.com
Sheepshearing at Spitalfields City Farm
It is the season for the shearing of the sheep here in Spitalfields and Tom Davies came over from the Vauxhall farm yesterday to do the deed. When he described the act as “something like a dance,” I could not envisage what he meant, until Tom set to work, taking hold of a sheep and twisting and turning it, as he sheared the fleece away.
For the time it took to shear the sheep, man and beast became partners in a strange choreography. The control was all with the man, but the sheep had to withhold resistance to allow the shearer to do his business. Commencing with the sheep on its back, working in a state of intense concentration, Tom manoeuvred the creature, securing it between his legs and manipulating it with his left hand, while holding electric clippers in his right. It is an act of will as much as physical dominance, and once Tom flipped the sheep onto its back, the animal went into a swoon of passivity that permitted him to set to work – not entirely dissimilar to the day dream that humans enter into while at the hairdressers.
Strength and balance are required to hold the creature firmly in place and manipulate it with dexterity while shearing. Equally, control and finesse are necessary to achieve a close shave and not cut the sheep anywhere tender. And I am pleased to report that Tom demonstrated all these qualities, to the delight of the excited audience at the Spitalfields City Farm, where the annual sheepshearing is one of the highlights of the season.
No blood was shed and afterwards all the sheep emerged looking sleek yet alert, where before they looked fuzzy and vacant. Once they recovered from the shock of this ritualised public de-nuding, I have no doubt they felt much more comfortable in the Summer temperatures. “It went reasonably well,” declared Tom with nonchalant modesty, rubbing his hands on his shirt and wiping the perspiration from his tanned features, after receiving rapturous applause for his heroic endeavours from an enthusiastic crowd.
Meanwhile nearby, in the cool shade of an old barn away from the dusty heat of the shearing pen, the ladies of the London Guild of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers were at work. They were taking raw fleece and carding and spinning it to create yarn, and weaving and knitting the thread, thereby demonstrating the stages of the creation of woollen textiles, and telling a story that is as old as humanity.
Over on the other side of Spitalfields, we have Tenterground and Tenter St, as a reminder of the weaving of wool that once took place here, even before the silk weavers came. A tenter ground was the site where newly woven pieces of wet woollen cloth were stretched out after washing, onto wooden frames called tenters which held them taut so the fabric would dry flat and square.
Jenifer Midgeley had a table loom set up beside her friends from the Guild, Carole, Jean and Pat who were hard at work spinning wool, using wheels and spindles. There is a quality to these modest activities that encourages garrulous sociability, and I found the placid atmosphere of amicable conversation in the shady barn was a welcome respite to rowdy cheers of the sheepshearing in the scorching sunlight of the yard.
I watched Jenifer as she demonstrated her table loom, and I observed faces illuminated in amazement when she revealed the separation of the warp and the weft, inviting passersby to take a seat and pass the shuttle back and forth through the loom. In a moment, the mystery of the creation of cloth was manifest in its essential simplicity. For some children, the sight of women spinning and weaving was a novelty they had not seen before, outside books of fairy tales, and I saw many young ones captivated by the rare yet commonplace magic of these graceful senior ladies working at their wheels and looms.
Sheepshearing is traditionally a time of celebration and high jinks, and the city farm was overrun with delighted city families enjoying a rural retreat from the dusty urban streets beyond. With Tom shearing the fleece and the women of the Guild spinning wool and weaving cloth, it was an ideal diversion to fill a beautiful afternoon of early Summer in London.
More White Vans of Whitechapel
Ever since I wrote about the white vans of Whitechapel last year, I have been keeping an expectant eye on the market because you never know when the next masterpiece will appear. The market traders use these shabby vans as overnight storage and they do not travel far beyond Whitechapel. In fact, many sit upon deflated tyres and have not moved an inch since I wrote my first appraisal of this unlikely gallery of paintings six months ago.
With the keen eye of a collector, I am now photographing these colourful works whenever I discover new ones, to create an archive for your pleasure – and today I am publishing the fruits of my recent fieldwork.
Night and day, you see the parade of vans parked along the curb in the Whitechapel Rd, next to the pitches of the respective traders. By day, the images upon the vans are only visible to drivers and those on the Royal London Hospital side of the street, because the stalls obscure them from visitors to the market. But by night, the extraordinary gallery of ramshackle painted vans lined up becomes apparent to everyone. If you did not know, you might think that the travelling circus had come to town. You might expect them to burst open, and see cartoon characters, clowns and stilt walkers erupt upon Whitechapel.
A chance conversation yesterday with a fruit and vegetable seller revealed the origin of this flourishing phenomenon. Proud of his own livery, with two fine owls emblazoned upon his rear shutter, he me told the story. Many of the traders were frustrated by the proliferation of tags sprayed upon their vans but, when an artist asked for permission to paint upon a van, with visionary foresight, the trader in question consented – as long as the artist covered the entire van. He recognised the code of respect between street artists and taggers, so that once his vans was painted with an elaborate design, the taggers would not deface it. And for the most part, this etiquette has been upheld, encouraging more traders to offer their vans as canvasses to street artists.
Already, a proliferation of the painted vans has taken place – with several in Bethnal Green Market, and two sad vans in Sclater St Market, that were going nowhere, have been given the treatment too. The notion has spread beyond box vans now, with the first painted mini van spotted in Bethnal Green recently, and there is a lovely painted trailer in Whitechapel Market that is a tour de force.
There is a sensuous glory in colour that all these paintings share, along with an exuberant carnival energy that is especially winning when manifest in exultations to “Get Up!” and “Get Busy!” The significance of the imagery is an intriguing mystery to me – a curious amalgam of owls, clothes pegs and characters sprung from manga cartoons – but the boggling eyes and sparkling teeth rendered in such dramatic colour contrasts ensure these vans have a vibrant presence in the cityscape. And on the odd occasion when I have come upon them unexpectedly, parked in a dull side street, they have always caused my heart to leap in delight.
No longer in conflict, the traders, taggers and street artists have become artistic collaborators, through an imaginative solution that satisfies all and the result is a flowering of street art that brings wit, drama and romance to a scruffy old market. All presided over by the traders themselves, who have become unintentional patrons of art, the accidental Medicis of Whitechapel Market.
Columbia Road Market 37
This week I accompanied my neighbour to the market early to buy plants for his garden and help him carry them back to Spitalfields, but although we were laden with Lupins, Poppies, Pelargoniums and Clematis, I could not resist buying something for myself. So I acquired these two Alpine curiosities for just £3,Dianthus (Squarrosus Nanus) and Viola (Molly Sanderson).
My garden is full of colourful flowers now, but I chose this monochrome combination of a tiny white Carnation and black Viola to place on my kitchen window sill next to Mr Pussy’s drinking dish, where I can admire them at close quarters each day. When the temperature rises, it suits my cat to sit here on the sill, enjoying the cool breeze through the old house and lapping up fresh water. The white Carnation makes a fine contrast with his black hair while the black Viola almost matches the sable tones of his silky coat.
Meanwhile in my garden, the Foxgloves I planted last Autumn create a fine parade up my path, while the Aquilegias I bought earlier this year have turned out to be an unusual double variety, of magnificently layered spiky petals in deep purple, violet and blue tones. Finally, one of several varieties of Astrantia, that I planted over the Winter, has come into bloom. It is a favourite plant in my garden, at this favoured time of the year, when all is fresh and green, with flowers opening and the promise of many more blooms to come throughout the long Summer ahead.
Aquilegia
Digitalis
Astrantia
Aquilegia
Adam Dant, Artist
This is Adam Dant standing in Boundary Passage, just off Shoreditch High St, with his hands placed protectively upon two Napoleonic cannons from the Battle of Trafalgar which are set into the pavement here to serve as bollards. Adam explained to me that each one has a cannon ball welded into the top and these trophies became the model when more bollards were required. Replicas were cast in different sizes and proportions, and today they are to be seen everywhere in London, yet among all the hundreds that line our city streets, these two are special because they are the real thing, though I wonder if anyone who walks through Boundary Passage today is aware that these are spoils of war.
Adam, who lives and works nearby in Club Row, specialises in the arcane and amazing, producing all kinds of ephemera, drawings and prints that exist somewhere between satires and celebrations. His subject is the diverse absurdity of culture and history. It is not Nonsense exactly, but Adam delights in serious craziness that pokes fun at our contemporary media by proposing charismatically strange alternative perspectives. He came here to this corner of Shoreditch fifteen years ago, wishing to be within proximity of printers, not just for practicalities’ sake but because he has great affection for the culture of small-time old-school printers, as he recalled fondly,“There were a lot in Redchurch St then, I used to get plates made at ‘Holywells’, they used to make bromides too. ‘Foremost Grinding’ next door used to sharpen the blades for guillotines and there was the ‘Old Nichol Press’ where I could typesetting done.”
Visiting Adam in his beautiful studio on two floors of a tiny old workshop in Club Row, I walked straight in off the street, passing through a battered cane blind, to discover a scruffy yet cosy little room with a fireplace at one end and a drawing board that filled the entire wall at the other. All conveniently illuminated by the morning sun through the wall of translucent glass that comprised the street frontage. In one corner was a narrow desk, beneath a steep staircase, and at the centre of the room, floored with boards at eccentric angles, sat a small couch with a low table piled with history and art books. As I sat down, I cast my eyes up at the appealingly garish painting on the ceiling, hand painted to look like wallpaper that looked like nineteenth century plasterwork.
I felt I met a kindred spirit in Adam Dant because for five years he published a daily newspaper under a pseudonym, “Donald Parsnips’ Daily Journal” in an edition of a hundred copies that he distributed free each day. “I was making lots of pamphlets and maps and handbills at the time, I think I was impressed by the history of the City of London, especially the birth of the press and the unfettered pamphleteering tradition. I got up at six each day and used the available time before I left for work to write it, so if I got up late it looked a bit scrappy. I printed them at Frank’s photocopy shop in the Bethnal Green Rd and I’d hand them out as I walked between here and Agnews in Bond St, where I worked at the time. This was before all the free newspapers. It was the strategy of the fine artist, confounding people with preposterousness.” Quickly, Donald Parsnips took on a life of his own as Adam was invited to recreate the project in Berlin, Paris, New York and Cairo – where he produced a special edition written by hand on papyrus leaves.
The purpose of my visit was to ask about Adam’s print “The New Street Cries of Spittelfields, shewing a small selection of the local trade and life with their respective cries, barks and toutage, for the benefit of the curious visitors.” He showed me the oldest print of “The Cries of London” dated 1660 recording the cries of the street hawkers of the city, apparently inspired by an earlier French version, and a set of playing cards of London cries from 1745, before he unfurled his print, based upon his own observation of contemporary life in Spitalfields. I realised what a gift this notion was for an artist because the street life of Spitalfields remains vivid today, even if the trades would be unrecognisable to our predecessors.
Here in Adam’s print you will find, The Wifi Worker, The Japanese Hairscruffer, The Pizza Leafleteer, The DVD Hawker, The Belly Piercer, The Hen-night Girl, The Phone Unlocker, The Internet Cafe Man, The Cause Braceleter, The Loft Mouse, The Night Trolleymen, The Wedding Videoer, The Late Postie, The Shirt Shredder and The Bendy Bussenger.
There is an undeniable romance to the illustrations of the street cries of old London whereas Adam’s print is inflected with a different spirit, that of his own gentle satire. He made the print in 2005, but now that we no longer see so many hen nights in Spitalfields and the bendy buses are being taken off the road, the world has already moved on. I have no doubt that it will be only a few more years before people look at Adam Dant’s print of “The New Street Cries of Spittelfields” with its border of bagels, and sigh for the lost days of DVD Hawkers and Wifi Workers.
Cries of London 1754
The New Street Cries of Spittelfields 2005
