How Raymond’s shop became Leila’s shop
The top photograph of 15 Calvert Avenue is believed to have been taken one Sunday in 1900 around the time Prince Edward and Princess Alexandra came to open the Boundary Estate, and I snapped the lower photograph last Thursday, more than a century later. One day, Joan Rose visited Leila’s Cafe next door at 17 Calvert Avenue and brought out the old photograph (which she always carries in her purse) to show Leila McAlister, explaining that the little boy standing in the doorway was her father. A copy now hangs proudly in Leila’s Shop, and served as the inspiration for our escapade last week when a class from Virginia Rd School in Arnold Circus turned out to assist and we stopped the traffic to take the new picture.
Joan (unmarried name Raymond) told me that her father Alfred was born in 1896 and is approximately six years old in the picture. The woman beside him in the doorway is Phoebe Raymond his mother, Joan’s grandmother, and the man on the left is his father, Joan’s grandfather Albert Alfred Raymond (known as Alf), the first proprietor of the newly built shop. They all lived in the flat up above and you can see their songbird in the cage, a cock linnet.
Phoebe has her smart apron with frills and everyone is wearing their Sunday best – remarkably for the time, everyone has good quality boots. I like the sacks with SPITALFIELDS printed on them, indicating produce from the fruit and vegetable market half a mile away, and the porters’ baskets which Leila still uses today. You can see the awning has been taken up to permit enough light for the photograph and then it has rained. We had the same problem with the weather, but were blessed with a few hours between a sleet shower and a blizzard to snatch our picture.
Joan Rose told me she believes her family are of French Huguenot origin and the original surname was Raymond de Foir, which means the people you see in the old photograph are probably descended from the Huguenot immigrants that came here in the eighteenth century. What touched me most was to learn from Joan that Alfred her father (pictured here eternally six years old in his Sunday best on the threshold of his father’s shop), went off to fight in the First World War and, aged twenty-two, was there at the battle of the Somme when so many died, but returned to run the shop in Calvert Avenue carrying on his father’s business in the same premises until his death in 1966. Joan grew up here and attended both Virginia Rd School and Rochelle School on either side of Arnold Circus. Although she now lives in west London, she remains involved with her old neighbourhood today as Honorary Patron of the Friends of Arnold Circus.
I am very grateful to Leila McAlister and to Robert Bradshaw, manager of Leila’s shop (pictured on the left of the new photograph in the same spot as his predecessor a century ago), for kindly organising the picture last week and also to the school pupils for participating with such enthusiasm (their teacher stands in the shop doorway). Leila and Robert handed out chocolate brownies and tangerines on the pavement after the photograph was taken and a spontaneous Christmas party ensued, demonstrating that the exuberant energy of children remains a constant across the span of history defined by these two pictures.
Columbia Road Market 17
The predicted overnight snowfall came down as rain and froze to create a hazardous sheet of ice upon the roads and pavements this morning, and the cars were driving slowly to avoid skidding as I made my way, one wary step at a time, towards the market in the bitter cold. Once I got there I was greeted by a crowd of people who, like me, were taking the last opportunity to buy a tree – and Denise who was cheerfully swinging the mistletoe around.
Last year, I made the big mistake of thinking that if I got to Columbia Rd at the end of business on the final Sunday before Christmas, I could get a massive tree at a bargain price and carry it home in triumph. In fact, there were hardly any left, I was left with a disappointing choice of a few puny leftovers and had to make do with the best of the bunch. This year, I was there early in the day and after momentarily deliberating between Scots Pine and Douglas Fir, a plumed Scots Pine caught my eye – not an ostentatiously large tree but a fine shape and colour. Mark sold it to me for £25, I carried it home in quiet satisfaction and now the house smells of pine.
Do you remember the Blue Hyacinths I bought back on November 1st to complement my grandmother’s blue Spode bowl that she always planted with bulbs? As you can see, they turned out pink. She would have admonished them for their insufficiency in not being true blue, and say they look like hideous pink plastic swimming hats – but it is merely a question of taste. If I recollect correctly, pale pink is the natural colour of Hyacinths, that I once bought years ago from gypsies in the streets in Transylvania, where they grow wild in the Carpathian mountains.
This week, whenever I have come into the house out of the grim cold weather, these pink Hyacinths have welcomed me with their unashamedly vibrant lush flowers that never fail to lift my spirits, how could I be disappointed with that? There is always such a precarious balance of huge expectation and potential disappointment at Christmas, and it is a delicate equilibrium to preserve.
Labour & Wait, top Christmas gifts
If there was a fairy godmother in my personal Christmas pantomime, she would appear in a cloud of smoke waving one of these brushes from Labour & Wait and in a trice all the seasonal washing up would vanish into thin air. I think the brushes look very handsome in this pot, like a vase of flowers in a still life painted by Vanessa Bell. Before I discovered them, I used the plastic equivalents from the supermarket but then I would use them to clean a hot frying pan under the tap and the bristles would bend out of shape in the heat. Very quickly they became useless and I had to keep replacing them, until this summer when I bought one of these brushes manufactured in Germany by Redecker for £3. The bristles are of natural fibre and do not melt, so after many months of use my brush is still in good shape and ready to tackle the Christmas dishes. I wish my mother had given me one of these years ago. Maybe I would not have been immediately overjoyed, at first glance, to discover a washing up brush under the tree on Christmas morning with a ribbon round its neck, but like all the very best presents it would prove its worth over time and become a treasured possession, as my brush is today. That is why this is one of my top Christmas presents, buy a washing up brush for the one you love and they will never forget your thoughtful generosity.
My father used to give me money at Christmas, he would produce some bank notes from his back pocket once my mother was out of the room and offer them to me in a sheaf with the instruction “Here’s some money, now don’t spend it!” So in these straightened times, I know he would approve of my other gift recommendation from Labour & Wait, this perversely attractive wooden piggy bank (with a slot large enough for £2 coins) manufactured in France by Vilac. Deep in the heart of Jura, surrounded by high mountains, wide lakes and huge forests, between Champagnole and Sainte-Claude, Vilac has been manufacturing toys since 1911. Quoted on Vilac’s website, Roland Barthes, the snobby structuralist writer and philosopher says of the carved wood Vilac uses to manufacture their toys,“It is a familiar yet poetic material that establishes in children a sense of continuity between a tree, a table and floor. Wood is not damaging or unsettling. It does not smash, it wears away. It is durable and remains so as a child grows old.” And there was I just liking this little piggy’s cute smile.
Benjamin Pollock, a penny plain, tuppence coloured
Yesterday as the first snowflakes of the winter spiraled out of a pale sky, I walked up through Spitalfields towards Hoxton following in the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson who came here to 73 Hoxton St in 1884 to visit Benjamin Pollock’s Toy Theatre Shop. “If you love art, folly or the bright eyes of children speed to Pollock’s” he wrote in his essay “A penny plain, tuppence coloured” – referring to the prices of the printed sheets in their hand-coloured and plain versions.
Stevenson was an only child who played with toy theatres to amuse himself in the frequent absences from school due to sickness, when he was growing up in Edinburgh. I too was an only child who was enchanted by the magic of toy theatres, especially at Christmas and it was the creation of these dramas that led to my first career, as a playwright. So you will understand why it was of interest to me to find 73 Hoxton St. Although Pollock’s Toy Theatres survived at this address into the twentieth century, I knew the shop was gone but I wanted to find the site.
Hoxton St has even numbers on the east side and odd numbers on the west. Walking past the Job Centre and Hackney College, I quickly found numbers 74 and 76, but to my disappointment I saw a recent housing development on the other side of the street without any numbers. I crossed the road to read a metal plate there which, contrary to my expectation, explained this was the site where the letter was read discovering the Gunpowder Plot. By now, the snow was falling fast, so I decided that I should be satisfied with this discovery and turned back towards Spitalfields. But then, as I passed Hoxton Post Office, I saw another round metal plate on the corner of Fanshaw St marking the site of Benjamin Pollock’s shop.
Even when Stevenson came here, he knew that Benjamin Pollock’s shop was the portal to an earlier world, because the theatres of his childhood that he purchased in a shop on Leith Walk in Edinburgh were produced by Skelt’s Juvenile Drama and the names on the printing plates were altered with successive owners, “This national monument, after changing its name to Park’s, Webb’s, Reddington’s and last of all to Pollock’s, has now become, for the most part, a memory”, he wrote.
Coincidentally, it was Mr W.Webb’s great granddaughter, the legendary publisher Kaye Webb (who edited, Lilliput in the forties, Picture Post in the fifties and Puffin Books in the sixties and seventies), who first took me seriously as a writer and was the first to publish my works. She lived in a flat overlooking the canal at Maida Vale and when I came to London to stay with her there, she showed me one of Webb’s theatres that had been coloured and made up by Ronald Searle to whom she had been married. She regretted the name Pollock had erased that of her grandfather but I was fascinated that the knack for creating popular culture had been passed on down the generations.
John Reddington opened his shop in 1851 and ran it until his daughter Eliza married Benjamin Pollock in 1873 and they took over the shop, continuing until Benjamin Pollock died in 1937, by which time toy theatres had become an anachronism and the business was in terminal decline. Yet such was the celebrity that Stevenson had brought, Benjamin Pollock received the unique accolade for a Hoxton shopkeeper of an obituary in the Times. His daughters Selina and Louise sold out in 1944 and shortly after the building was destroyed by an enemy bomb. It was Marguerite Fawdry who salvaged the remnants, including the printing plates, and opened Pollock’s Toy Museum in 1956 as a trust. The plates you see here today were kindly provided by Alan Powers, the modern-day saviour of Pollock’s Toy Theatres.
I cannot quite put my finger on what still draws me to the romance of these old theatres, even Stevenson admitted “The purchase and the first half hour at home, that was the summit.” As a child, I think the making of them was the greater part of the pleasure, cutting out the figures and glueing it all together. “I cannot deny the joy that attended the illumination, nor can I quite forget that child, who forgoing pleasure, stoops to tuppence coloured.” Stevenson wrote.
As I walked back down Shoreditch High St in the whirling blizzard, I began to envy Stevenson’s escape to the South Sea Islands, but until the wanderlust seizes me, I am happy to be here in Spitalfields writing to you every day. In the meantime, we share our passion for toy theatres. I love the evocation of the heroic nineteenth century theatre that they provide and I am still entranced by the beautiful vista they offer to an imaginative world rich in the poetry of infinite dramatic potential.
There is still time for you to order one for Christmas from www.pollocksmuseum.co.uk where you can also book to attend a performance of JACK & THE BEANSTALK on 10th January at the Art Workers Guild in Queens Sq.
James Brown, illustrator & printmaker
This fascinating linocut by James Brown caught my eye at the Mangle Sale on Saturday, so on Monday I walked over from Spitalfields to Hackney Wick, where James has his studio, to find out more.
It is curious that proverbs come in contradictory pairs. “A stitch in time saves nine” versus “Don’t cross your bridges till you come to them” or “You’re never to old to learn” versus “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” I do not know whether this demonstrates the futility of generic advice or whether instead it actually reveals something essential about the contradictory nature of human emotion.
At first, James Brown’s linocut drew my attention with its beautiful rich texture and the energetic abstract quality of his lettering but, on closer inspection, I realised he had found the ideal visual device to unlock the sardonic humour of these daft platitudes. James came over to speak to me as I was deciphering the letters and turned the print upside down with a flourish, because either way up makes equal sense. In fact, he sells them framed with two hooks so you can turn them round on the wall according to your whim.
To me, the phrase “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” evokes the sentiment of the nineteenth century while “Out of sight out of mind” speaks of a hardboiled twentieth century cynicism, and the different typefaces reflect this disparity eloquently – James has perfect pitch when it comes to rendering the tone of language in visual terms. However, what I like most of all is that both phrases become one design, because it is the true nature of emotions to be mixed. You could believe both phrases at the same time, you would be confused but you would be human.
By contrast, James struck me as an appealingly modest and well-balanced individual, when he welcomed me to his beautiful light studio on the second floor of an old warehouse in the tiny quarter of industrial buildings sandwiched between Victoria Park and the Lee Valley Olympic Site. After ten years working as a textile designer, coming up continuously with designs for patterns, followed by a stint at a fashion label, he quit to reinvent himself as an illustrator and moved in to share this studio with his brother. He began by making screenprints to sell at his son’s school Arts & Crafts fair and the immediate positive response to his witty attractive designs was such that he never looked back.
As well as making his own prints and selling them, James has been receiving commissions from some prestigious clients including Priscilla Carluccio’s FEW & FAR. He was feeling particularly triumphant the day I visited because he had just received his first order for a large number of his prints from Liberty of London and we shook hands in celebration of the moment. It was a bold step that James took, striking out on his own mid-career, so it was inspiring to meet him now when everything is beginning to take off.
James has decided that his “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” print is to become the first of a series based on pairs of proverbs. “It is nice to know what I am going to do to start next year”, he declares in excited anticipation. I cannot wait either because I can imagine a whole line of them on the wall up a long staircase and everyday you could swap them round and drive everyone crazy with the visible barometer of your moods. More seriously, I am especially impressed by the way James has mastered the humble yet stubborn technique of the linocut with such panache. “People remember linocutting from school but they don’t understand how it can be so precise“, he explains before adding enigmatically“but I have ways…”
Then James pointed out a particularly dynamic linocut with flamboyant letters that read THIS IS WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS! confiding that this is his biggest seller, and revealing that he never tires of overhearing couples whispering to each other “Let’s get one and put it in the bedroom.” Once, he overheard a young girl say to her mother, “Let’s get one and put in the kitchen,” and then the mother’s heartfelt response, “There’s no magic there.” Beyond bedrooms and kitchens, copies of this print now also adorn the offices of a mindreader and a magician, James tells me proudly. I was pleased to see one on the wall of his own studio too, because this truly is where the magic happens.
Keep a lookout for James’ new work at Elphick’s in Columbia Rd or visit his website www.generalpattern.net to buy online.
The Romance of Old Whitechapel
During summer, I like to walk down from Spitalfields through Whitechapel to the river each week and see what is going on down there. On one of these walks, about eighteen months ago, I took a detour down Turner St at the back of the Royal London Hospital where I came upon an old terrace that was being rebuilt directly behind Will Alsop’s new Blizard Building. The houses drew my attention because something unusual was going on there – the materials being used in the renovations were historically appropriate and even the door fixtures were second-hand, so that rather than creating uniformity there was a subtle variance among all the houses of the modest terrace. There was a rare sensibility at work and I was fascinated. For the next year, each time I walked down to the river, I took the same detour and observed the progress of these buildings, pressing my nose against the window on occasion to observe the work inside.
As I stood on the corner of Turner St and Varden St and looked back, on the very first day I found this terrace, admiring the attics with pantile roofs and the clapperboard extensions newly added to the early nineteenth century buildings – I had a strange experience of deja vu. It was as if I had seen this view before, but yet the evidence of my eyes was clear, the work was newly done and incomplete in places. I knew that clapperboard houses were in the majority in the East End in the nineteenth century but none have survived to the present day. I kept going back to Turner St in order to unravel this puzzle in my mind.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, I met Tim Whittaker, Director of the Spitalfields Trust – while I was visiting Dennis Severs’ house. I asked him about the Turner St houses, and he revealed that he was in charge of these renovations himself and the clapperboard extensions were based on an old photo of houses in Wellclose Square – a photo reproduced in a book I had read in the spring of 2008. Now I knew exactly where I had seen this view before and the mystery was solved. He generously agreed to take me on a tour of the houses and even introduced to the householder against whose window I had pressed my nose, who fortunately did not recognise me.
The Spitalfields Trust began in the nineteen seventies to save the old houses in Spitalfields but nowadays they are casting their gaze further afield. These houses in Whitechapel built between 1809-15 had been derelict and uninhabited for more than fifteen years when they caught the eye of Tim Whittaker, who lives nearby in an old house in New Rd that he has been restoring himself for years. At the time, the Turner St houses belonged to the London Development Agency who had scheduled them for demolition to build a new innovation centre on the site. But Tim successfully proposed an alternative site for the innovation centre nearby on New Rd, opening the way to the Trust acting as an estate agent selling the houses to people who appreciated the quality of the buildings and who agreed to repair them well under the guidance of the Trust.
Thanks to a happy accident when an English Heritage listing offer was scared out of one of the derelict properties by a pigeon, the buildings were never listed. This allowed the possibility of adding the bathroom extensions and of raising the roofs to create an attic floor for each house. However, Tim, in supervising the project, has been rigorous in adopting an historically accurate vernacular aesthetic, which is how he came to base the design of the extensions upon an old photograph of houses long-gone in nearby Wellclose Sq. But his approach goes further than that, because the renovations have been undertaken using a cunning mixture of salvage and new materials, one of the houses even contains old bannisters given to the Trust from a house that had been demolished in Wellclose Sq.
Coming from a family of architects, with grandparents and a mother and a father who were all architects, Tim Whittaker describes himself wryly as “not an architect,” although his background and many years working for the National Trust as a surveyor, before he joined the Spitalfields Trust, more than qualify him for the role of supervising architect that he has undertaken for this inspirational renovation. I think Tim’s declaration means that he chooses to reject the role of architect because his work is about responding to the innate nature of these old buildings and resisting anything that might be an imposition upon their distinctive quality. There is something very exciting now about this elegant block of modest nineteenth century terraces holding its own beside Will Alsop’s strikingly modern construction next door, both benefit from the comparison.
These small houses were built at the beginning of the nineteenth century for lower middle class families – a surgeon, a sea captain, a plumber, a shopkeeper and a Chelsea pensioner among others – only one had a live-in maid. A hundred years later, this was an exclusively Jewish neighbourhood and another hundred years on the houses would have been lost forever, if it had not been for the Spitalfields Trust. I particularly like the austere (ungentrified) modesty of these buildings that speak eloquently of the lives of the ordinary working people who have lived here for two centuries. Too often these buildings that do not draw attention to themselves are the ones that get torn down. Tim’s ambition was to maintain and enhance the spirit of the neighbourhood, “I wanted to give Whitechapel back a bit of the romance it had lost”, he says, and he has succeeded splendidly.
Columbia Road Market 16
Again this week, the market was crowded before eight in the morning and the drama had intensified, not just because it was another week closer to Christmas and the rain had finally stopped, but because the mistletoe arrived. Immediately, I spotted a gruff old gentleman sidling up to the young ladies who ran the next stall, brandishing a sprig and declaring “I know a trick with mistletoe!”
After due deliberation, I bought this bough for £10 from Denise Kirstenson, the Eliza Doolittle of Columbia Rd, whose fine soprano voice rings out throughout the market each week. Some readers may wonder why I chose to buy such a huge bough of of mistletoe. The answer is simple, I like to encourage lots of kissing in my house at Christmas.
