fiona

Cupcake Day, originally published 6th March 2012

April 7, 2020 By fiona

Saturday was cupcake day in the shop. We gathered at 10.30 to be taught how to decorate them by Lisa who has a passion for making them and baking in general. She supports the Spitalfields Crypt Trust and we offered a donation to the charity in return for a day’s tuition in cake decorating. I have a collection of 18^th and 19^th century hand written recipe books, which we are going to use to make the cakes to serve with the coffee arriving downstairs in the kitchen area of the shop in about a month. Cup cakes seem like a good idea too: there is something irresistible about these brightly coloured jewels. In the space of three and a half hours we made and decorated nearly two hundred of them and if you had told me at the beginning that we would be able to decorate the cakes that are in the photo I would have laughed and told you that it would be completely impossible. Nevertheless there they are and they created quite a stir as they appeared in the window of the shop so that by 2pm we had a queue forming and by 5pm we had sold out and raised nearly £200 for the charity. Thank you if you bought one and thanks to Lisa, we had a lot of fun.

(Seems a long while ago now and we never did do cupcakes in the coffee shop, which finally opened in May 2012 after a delay getting the coffee machine).

Robert Sayer’s Skaters, originally published 4th February 2012

April 6, 2020 By fiona

As I sit here in the shop in the cold waiting for the snow to arrive Robert Sayer’s engraving of skaters in January seemed appropriate.

The figures in this are very appealing: the bulk of the figures are around the fire, so bundled up that they can hardly move in contrast to the lightly clad figures on the ice, keeping warm through exercise. But perhaps he is also illustrating the folly of youth in its refusal to dress up warmly. I am not a print dealer, but from the research I have done into Robert Sayer, these figures seem to be typical. Slightly elongated limbs, with quite distinctive faces and a sparse approach to the landscape setting which has a very linear/graphic feel to it. The lines underneath read:

‘The old ones, round the fire give sage advice,

And cry ‘tis dang’rous skaiting on the Ice’,

But Fribble heeds not what old people say

Because he thinks he’s got more wit than they.’

‘Fribble’ means a coxcomb or dandy and I assume that’s the figure being pushed in the chair on the ice as he looks rather elegantly dressed. Apparently David Garrick played a character of the same name in a play, which fits with a date of mid eighteenth century for this set of prints.

Le Mans Brocante (originally posted 26th February 2012)

April 5, 2020 By fiona

I set off early on Wednesday morning: up at 5am in France (4am as far as I was concerned), to go with friends to the ‘brocante’ at Le Mans. I hadn’t been to it for a long while– it’s not much fun going on your own, struggling up at that time of the morning, driving for an hour and a half and then fighting for a parking space in the middle of a muddy field, so I was looking forward to going with the others. Of course once we arrived and had a quick cup of espresso to warm up, it was down to work and then you’re on your own: unspoken etiquette demands that you separate and go your own way to avoid the difficulties of everyone wanting the same thing. So it’s first come first served until the initial rush is over and then everyone meets up for another coffee and to compare notes.

I’m told that I’m very fussy about what I buy…. and there were lots of attractive things which, on the whole, weren’t as outrageously priced as I had expected. But it always has to be something I love for one reason or another and this dish from Provence was one of them. Partly it is the shape: I have two plates in the shop at the moment with the same glaze, so I was pleased to find a serving dish. Then there is the colour: such a suggestion of summer warmth against which any food would look good. But one food sprang to mind as soon as I saw it – asparagus. It’s not only that English asparagus is delicious, but the fact that it is only around for such a short time heightens my anticipation. And it is soon followed by broad beans, peas and all the other harbingers of summer. More than anything else though, it is the fact that asparagus would look perfect against the warm yellow of this glaze.

Town House Open Summer 2021

February 19, 2020 By fiona

Town House is having an Open exhibition again this summer! We had lots of visitors to our first one last year and I’m hoping this one will be even more popular.

I’d like to encourage as many artists as possible to submit as I want to have a wide range of artists’ work here over the summer, with many different interpretations of the theme: one thing that was important to you in lockdown. It can be a person, place, object or idea, just something that really helped over the past year, with an explanatory statement of up to 500 words.

Please tell anyone you know about it who might be interested….

It is open to residents of the UK who wish to submit an original painting in oil, acrylic or watercolour up to A1 in size (including frame), or an original (portable) sculpture. Submission ends on 16th May and for more details and the submission form see

http://bitly.com/THOpen21

Eleanor Crow’s Shopfronts of London

September 27, 2019 By fiona

An exhibition to accompany publication of the book of the same name featuring over eighty of Eleanor’s watercolours from the book, including some new ones

At a time of momentous change in the high street, Eleanor’s witty and fascinating personal survey champions the enduring culture of Britain’s small neighbourhood shops. Eleanor’s collection includes eighty of her watercolours of the capital’s bakers, cafés, butchers, fishmongers, greengrocers, chemists, launderettes, hardware stores, eel & pie shops, bookshops and stationers. Her pictures are accompanied in the book by the stories of the shops, their history and their shopkeepers – stretching from Chelsea in the west to Bethnal Green and Walthamstow in the east.

The watercolours are £150 framed (A5) and larger ones are £210 framed.

The exhibition opens on the 3rd October with a book launch and signing that evening 6 – 8pm and the exhibition continues at Town House until Sunday 20th October.

A Botanist takes to Paint

May 2, 2019 By fiona

I first came encountered David Stuart as a writer on garden history many years ago and was delighted to discover last year that he has now taken to paint . As a result I’m happy to announce that the summer exhibition at Town House shows recent work by David – botanist, author and now artist. Much of his work uses plants as a central motif and though treated with great expression, all are based on an intense knowledge of plant design and an equally intense love of their beauty.

David has always loved plants. After frequent painting trips to Kew Gardens as a child, he became a botanist studying plant structure and relationships and has a PhD from Edinburgh University, working at the Royal Botanic Garden. Thereafter, he spent many years as a writer and journalist specialising in gardens, garden history, plants and their influence on all our lives.

He has had columns in national newspapers and has published fifteen books, many hugely well reviewed. They include Georgian Gardens, Plants that Shaped our Gardens, Dangerous Garden, and Classic Garden Plans. Recently though, he has returned to painting and print making.

Exhibition runs at Town House 18th May – 8th September

Maps of London and Beyond by Adam Dant

July 1, 2018 By fiona

An exhibition of some of Adam Dant’s maps giving his unique view of our history and life today, to accompany publication of the book of the same name published by Batsford in conjunction with Spitalfields Life.

Artist and cartographer Adam Dant surveys London’s past, present and future from his studio in the East End. Beautiful, witty and subversive, his astonishing maps offer a compelling view of history, lore, language and life in the capital and beyond. Traversed by a plethora of colourful characters including William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Mary Wollstonecraft and Barbara Windsor, Adam Dant’s maps extend from the shipwrecks on the bed of the Thames to the stars in the sky over Soho. Along the way, he captures all the rich traditions in the capital, from brawls and buried treasure to gin and gentlemen’s clubs.

Adam Dant studied at the Royal College of Art, London and the MS University Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, India. He creates elaborate narrative drawings that examine and depict public contemporary life, space, mythologies and histories. Extensively researched and wittily perceptive, these works of art draw on a deep well of historical and visual sources. Adam Dant was the official election artist in 2015 and he lives and works in London.

Exhibition runs 5th – 22nd July 2018 at Town House

Doreen Fletcher: In Between, Almost Gone

October 15, 2017 By fiona

Doreen Fletcher arrived in the East End of London in the early 1980s and was immediately aware that the dilapidated buildings and small businesses in the streets around her were about to disappear. The sense of community in the area reminded her of her Midlands childhood and, inspired by the excitement of being somewhere new, she started a series of paintings of the East End that continued for the next twenty years.

Aware that she was documenting an urban landscape that would be lost forever, she regularly contacted galleries and magazines to promote not only her paintings, but also an awareness of what was happening in the East End. The negative response reflected the wider attitude at the time and was the culmination of centuries of neglect of an area that had long been regarded as a vast slum. Dispirited by the rejections and the overwhelming changes to the area, Doreen put all her work in the attic and stopped painting in 2003.

A chance contact put Doreen in touch with the the Gentle Author of Spitalfields Life and her paintings were featured on the blog, leading to a storm of interest and the near sell-out exhibition here at Town House in June last year. The sudden interest in Doreen’s work prompted her to start painting again and the latest work, retracing her East End footsteps, reveals how much of the area remains an edgeland balanced between demolition and regeneration, between past and future. It is an intensely human landscape that forms the essential backdrop to the lives of people still struggling to find their place in a built environment that is rapidly changing: an edgeland in between.

In Between, Almost Gone an exhibition of Doreen Fletcher’s latest work 13th – 29th October 2017 at Town House