Mark Gertler's Merry-Go-Round in Spitalfields: London #50

This roundel, or coal hole cover, is in front of Mark Gertler's former house at 32 Elder Street, Spitalfields, and is one of 25 different ones made for Spitalfields by Keith Bowler in 1995. It depicts a detail of Gertler's painting Merry-Go-Round (1916), which clearly shows Gertler's perception of war as absurd and horrific.

Below is an earlier link to another post I made about Gertler:

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Mark Gertler in Spitalfields

Features of Two Spitalfields Pubs: London #10

This painting in Spitalfields, by Ian Harper, is inside The Ten Bells on the corner of Commercial Street and Fournier Street. It depicts the entrance to the pub in the middleground on the left and Nicholas Hawksmoor's colossal Christ Church in the background on the right. Framing the painting in the foreground are the artists Gilbert and George, who are Spitalfields inhabitants. Dennis Severs seems to be staring at the viewer, although I'm at a loss as to the identity of the eccentrically dressed guy with the ostrich-feathered hat, although I'm pretty certain someone will soon be informing me. This painting, Spitalfields in Modern Times, now serves as a kind of companion piece to the much older work, Spitalfields in ye Olden Time – Visiting a Weaver's Shop, which is also in the pub.

 

I prefer not to mention the (relatively brief) pub name change.

 

'The one

and only

GIZMO

Local personality

and shihtzu

LIVED HERE

5.11.88–13.1.99'

 

This memorial is on the wall of The Golden Heart pub, also in Commercial Street, and is dedicated to landlady Sandra Esquilant's pet dog.

Expanded Eye Street Art, Spitalfields: London #9

'during times of

UNIVERSAL DECEIT,
telling the TRUTH
becomes a
REVOLUTIONARY act

FREE
bradley manning'

I noticed this in Hanbury Street, Spitalfields, and I don't think it was there when I was last there in April this year. Some people have attributed the quotation (obviously without the reference to Bradley Manning) to George Orwell, but it's perhaps far more recent.

Below is  a link to the Expanded Eye website.

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Expanded Eye

Save the Crane

A few weeks ago I made a post about street art in East London, which included this magnificent painting of a crane by Roa in Hanbury Street, Spitalfields, London. I now discover from The Gentle Author's latest post that the painting has now been hidden by a hideous, and totally superfluous, banner proclaiming: 'BANGLATOWN | BRICK LANE | CURRY CAPITAL 2012'.

A petition against the banner is now attracting attention. It can be signed by clicking on the link below. Also below is a link to The Gentle Author's post on the banner and more art by Roa, plus my original post on street art in this area.

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Petitioning Tower Hamlets Council: Save the Crane

Spitalfields Life: The Sacred Crane, The Flayed Pig & The Mighty Hedgehog

Street Art, East London

Rodinsky's Room and 19 Princelet Street, Spitalfields, London

19 Princelet Street was built in 1714 and was the home of the French Huguenot Ogier family, who developed a very successful silk weaving concern.

In 1839 there was a synagogue on these premises, and now this Grade II* listed building is the Museum of Immigration and Diversity.

David Rodinsky (1925–69), a reclusive Jew who understood a number of languages and whose papers reveal a knowledge of cabbalism, lived above the synagogue for many years until his death in a psychiatric hospital in 1969, although this was not discovered until some time after his room – left suddenly, a little like Dennis Severs' imaginary family left their rooms in Folgate Street (see link below) – was unlocked in 1980.

The book Rodinsky's Room (1999) is written by Rachel Lichtenstein (whose Polish grandparents came to the East End in the 1930s) and Iain Sinclair (who wrote an early article on Rodinsky's room) in alternating chapters, although most is written by Lichtenstein, who slowly uncovers the mystery of Rodinsky at the same time as she discovers her own past.

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Dennis Severs' House (6-minute video)

Mark Gertler in Spitalfields, London

32 Elder Street, Spitalfields.

'MARK GERTLER

1891–1939

Painter

lived here'

Gertler inspired several writers to include representations of him in their novels: in D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love, Loerke's huge frieze is modelled on Gertler's painting Merry-Go-Round; Huxley's Gombauld in Chrome Yellow is modelled on him, in which he is described as 'a black-haired young corsair of thirty, with flashing teeth and luminous dark eyes'; and Gilbert Cannan's Mendel: A Story of youth (1916) bases his central character on Gertler's early life, including his relationship with Dora Carrington and C. R. W. Nevinson.

 

Below is a link to a post I later made when I returned here to take a photo of the coal hole cover sculpture I missed:

 

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Mark Gertler's Merry-Go-Round in Spitalfields

Dennis Severs' House, Spitalfields, London

Dennis Severs' (pronounced 'Seevers'') house at 18 Folgate Street – built about 1724 – may not look particularly unusual from the outside, but inside this is a museum, or rather a movie set-cum-visual novel that the eponymous owner worked on between 1979 and his death in 1999, creating its rooms in styles from the Georgian era through to the late Victorian based on an imaginary family of silk weavers.

Severs, an Anglophile of American birth, invented the Jervis family of Huguenot descent who lived here from 1725 to 1919. He refurnished the ten rooms in the styles of different periods lived through, giving the appearance that the occupier(s) of them have just left them, and leaving bread unfinished, chopped onions, rumpled bedclothes, etc.

The house is only open at limited times and I was unable to make a visit, but I shall be back later in the year.

Below is a link to a six-minute video clip taken, I imagine, in the 1990s, and in which Severs makes an appearance.

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Dennis Severs' House

John Taylor, Water Poet, Spitalfields, London

The pub The Water Poet is at the corner of Folgate Street and Blossom Street, Spitalfields, and was formerly called The Old Pewter Platter. It is named after John Taylor (c.1578–1653), who called himself 'the Kings Majesties Water-Poet': Taylor spent much of his life ferrying passagers across the Thames. His book The Pennyles Pilgrimage (1618) describes in verse 'How he travailed on foot from London to Edenborough in Scotland, not carrying any Money to or fro, neither Begging, Borrowing, or Asking Meate, drinke or Lodging:
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The Pennyles Pilgrimage, Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor

Street Art, East London

This superb crane in Hanbury Street, Spitalfields, was drawn by the Belgian artist Roa, who is noted for his animal subjects. The Gentle Author – author of Spitalfields Life – saw Roa as he was painting this from a motorized cherry picker. Initially, Roa had intended to depict a heron, but on learning that the crane is a bird sacred to Bengalis he decided to change it.

This shot brings out more of the detail of the work.

Unfortunately, only the top part of Roa's work here, in the Foundry parking lot, Old Street, can be seen from ground level.

And I note a report that his squirrel on the corner of Club Row and Redchurch Street has been attacked by vandals.

Hanbury Street is a rich site for street art. Ben Slow's mural shows a member of the extreme right-wing English Defence League and an Islamic extremist. He intended it as a challenge to others and himself, to show two sides of evil. The two people represent intolerance, racism, and hate. Slow was encouraged by the essentially positive response his work received.

A Pleasure Unknown, on Hanbury Street again, shows a girl wearing a tee shirt of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures album cover, and was painted by Fin DAC, who describes himself as a painter who 'ignores the accepted visual language of street art', and terms it 'Urban Aesthetics' after the 19th century art movement.

At the top (Liverpool Street) end of Middlesex Street or Petticoat Lane is a mural whose subject (the alphabet) is perhaps more recognizable than most, as it's by Ben Eine, who also painted the alphabet on shop shutters further down Middlesex Street. Eine also gained considerable interest when David Cameron gave Barack Obama Eine's painting Twenty First Century City in 2010.

More examples of the four artists' work can be seen by clicking on the links below.

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Roa
Ben Slow
Fin DAC
Ben Eine

Alternative Fashion Week, Spitalfields Market, Tower Hamlets, London

Returning from Hackney Central in a downpour, I took shelter in Spitalfields Market, where I was surprised to find a fashion parade: I quickly learned that this was close to the end of the Alternative Fashion Week, so I show several photos I took of the event, the first a post-catwalk pose, and the rest of models going onto or out of the catwalk. Many images are blurred because of the swift movements of the models, and this is almost certainly the first time that a bikini has appeared in this blog:

The Gentle Author: Spitalfields Life: In the Midst of Life I Woke to Find Myself Living in an Old House beside Brick Lane in the East End of London (2012)

In a blog post below I briefly mentioned the recent publication of The Gentle Author's book Spitalfields Life, but I've now had time to read a great number of its many features, and can say that this is a whopping Christmas cake of a book that deals with an area largely left out of the guide books to London. This isn't a guide book as such, but a celebration of the diversity of the Spitalfields community which covers many different aspects of life there. Mercifully, Jack the Ripper is left to the tourists to find out about elsewhere, but then that's in Whitechapel, and anyway this is a very long way from the done-to-death conventional features of guide books – almost all of this is new material culled from people living in Spitalfields, and is about those people.

And The Gentle Author doesn't adhere strictly to geographical boundaries, as his (or her) Spitalfields includes parts of Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, the City, Shoreditch, and I was also pleased to learn of the grave of William Shakespeare's brother Edmund in Southwark Cathedral.*

These are some of the articles I really enjoyed in the book:

– Brazilian Robson Cezar, who collects bottle tops from local pubs to make artistic creations with, a very notable one being the fascia of the Bell pub on the corner of Middlesex Street and New Goulston Street.

– 16-year-old rapper Yasin Ahmed, also known as King Sour DA MC.

– Sandra Esqulant, landlady of the Golden Heart on Commercial Street, who was caught one night hoolahooping in the road and captured by (sometimes candid) photographer Phil Maxwell.

– Carrom Paul, who is introducing many people to the joys of the board game carrom.

– Belgian artist Roa, who has huge paintings on street walls, such as a squirrel at the corner of Club Row and Redchurch Street, and a crane on the corner of Hanbury Street and Brick Lane. A link to a number of his animal paintings elsewhere: ROA, l'homme et l'animal.

– The delightful Mr Pussy, The Gentle Author's cat.

– Stanley Rondeau, a volunteer at Nicholas Hawksmoor's Christ Church, who has traced his Huguenot family tree and written a booklet about it.

– London's Next Top Tranny contest, consisting of drag performances held at Bethnal Green Men's Social Club. (Interesting to learn that Hessel Street is named after Phoebe Hessel, who dressed as a man in order to join the army and be with her partner.)

– Aldgate pump on the corner of Fenchurch Street and Leadenham Street, which once caused hundreds of deaths through people drinking water polluted by human remains in cemeteries. The Gentle Author notes that Dickens gave a passing mention to it in The Uncommercial Traveller.

– The lovingly kept and still-functioning 1899 toilets under John Wesley's Chapel on City Road.

– Paper bag seller Paul Gardner, whose family has had a business in the same building since 1870. The Gentle Author claims you can't say you've been to Spitalfields without shaking his hand.

– Dennis Severs' House at 18 Folgate Street. The American Severs moved in here in 1979 and created a time capsule in each of the ten rooms, which have been furnished in styles of the 18th and 19th centuries, complete with smells. This is now a museum.

I think my only criticism is that there's not an Index – there are a few pages entitled 'Index', but in reality this merely amounts to another Table of Contents, this time divided into subject areas as in The Gentle Author's 'Spitalfields Life' blog.

The attractiveness of the book is enhanced by the illustrations of Mark Hearld, Lucinda Rogers, and Rob Ryan. Included at the back are two suggested routes for tours around Spitalfields.

*The Gentle Author's latest blog post (1 April) is about Charles Dickens in Shadwell and Limehouse.

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'Spitalfields Life' blog.

66,000 Miles Per Hour: The Gentle Author of Spitalfields Life.

The Gentle Author

Googling around – partly in preparation for a short stay in London next month, partly as a spinoff to delving into Iain Sinclair's East End – I stumbled by chance across an anonymous writer of unknown sex, using the byline 'The Gentle Author' in his or her blog 'Spitalfields Life', and found a treasure chest of articles (written every day from August 2009 to the present, which are projected to continue far into the future) about the unsung folk of Spitalfields, London, the extraordinary 'ordinary' people who people it, and the architectural features which form the backcloth to the everyday theatre of the area.

The Gentle Author's most recent blog posts are an indication of the variety of the content, often with generous photographic images: early 19th century illustrators Isaac Richard and George Cruickshank; the death two days ago of Charlie Burns, a  94-year-old who spent his later days viewing the world in a car on Bacon Street off Brick Lane, where he had spent his life; and (in a single post) paper bag seller Paul Gardner, dairyman Henry Jones, and umbrella maker Richard Ince. There is an evident compulsion for the Gentle Author to record the normally unrecorded.

Reviewers have found analogies of the Gentle Author's work in such diverse people as Chaucer, Dickens, Pepys, Orwell, Patrick Keiller, W. G. Sebald, Geoffrey Fletcher, Dr Johnson, Henry Mayhew, etc. This is indeed wonderful stuff, and it's heartening to learn that about 150 chapters of this material have been mass hard copied, and The Gentle Author's lavish book is called Spitalfields Life: In the Midst of Life I Woke to Find Myself Living in an Old House Beside Brick Lane in the East End of London, and was published by Saltyard Books earlier this month.

This is a link to the Gentle Author's blog. S/he goes to some pains to point out the importance of the people s/he is writing about as opposed to him/herself, although a fascinating interview with him or her appears as a blog post in 'Spitalfields Life', in which the Gentle Author, in passing, mentions the influence on him/her of Kierkegaard and Raymond Williams's Culture and Society: it is here. More information on the writer can be gleaned in a Guardian article here.

I shall have much more to say about this publication in due course, although already I'm sure that this 428-page book will be quite a read.

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Link to the later post:

The Gentle Author: Spitalfields Life: In the Midst of Life I Woke to Find Myself Living in an Old House beside Brick Lane in the East End of London (2012).