Urban Makers at Old Spitalfields — Wednesday 16 September

About this event

Where

Good to know

Meet the makers

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  Coptic & Co

  Stationery

  Coptic binding is the oldest codex structure there is and it lets a book open completely flat, which matters enormously if you are drawing across a spread.

  website@copticandco

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  Crumb & Cranny

  Food & drink

  I bake with a sourdough starter I have kept alive for nine years and a stone-milled flour from a farm in Suffolk. The loaves are long-fermented over two days, which is why they keep for a week and why people who struggle with shop bread tend to get on with mine. At markets I bring country loaves, seeded rye, and a tray of cardamom buns that sell out first every single time. Everything is baked the night before in a small bakery I rent by the hour.

  website@crumbandcranny

• 

  Foundry Fern

  Jewellery

  I do my own casting, which most makers at my scale send out. A small centrifugal caster, a burnout kiln and a lot of patience. I carve the originals in blue wax, so the models are properly sculptural: chunky fern-frond rings, ridged bands, a pendant like a rolled leaf. All the silver is recycled and the scrap goes straight back into the crucible. If you want a size that is not on the table, I will take the order and post it within a fortnight.

  website@foundryfern

• 

  Koji & Co

  Food & drink

  I grow koji on barley in an incubator I built from a broken wine fridge, then use it to make miso, shio koji and a fermented chilli paste. The misos sit in buckets under weights for anything from six months to two years, so what I sell now was started long before I knew whether it would work. My six-month barley miso is sweet and light, the two-year is dark and properly savoury. I give people spoons and explain how to use it, since most have only met it in soup.

  website@kojiandco

• 

  Nightshift Etching

  Print & illustration

  I drive a night bus four evenings a week and draw everything I see from the cab in a pocket sketchbook at the terminus. Those sketches become drypoint prints, scratched straight into perspex with a needle so the burr holds the ink and gives a velvety line. Each plate only yields fifteen good impressions before the burr flattens. The subjects are night workers, empty stops and the strange blue light of an out-of-service depot. I print on Sundays and sell what I have.

  website@nightshiftetching

• 

  Offcut Studio

  Woodwork

  Everything I make comes from the skips of joinery workshops across east London, which means my material is free and completely unpredictable. I glue up offcuts into striped blocks and turn or cut them into bowls, coasters, small shelves and door handles. The stripes make it obvious the wood had a previous life. Nothing is stained. All the colour is the timber itself, oak next to iroko next to painted MDF edges. I usually have about eight species on a table at once.

  website@offcutstudio

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  Ore & Origin

  Jewellery

  Traceability is the reason I started.

  website@oreandorigin

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  Paper Cartographer

  Print & illustration

  I draw maps by hand of things that are not usually mapped: every lido within the M25, the lost rivers of east London, the route of a walk somebody sends me.

  website@papercartographer

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  The Marbled Edge

  Stationery

  I marble paper on a tray of thickened water, floating paint on the surface and combing it into patterns before laying a sheet on top to lift the image.

  website@themarblededge

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  Two Left Thumbs

  Ceramics

  I am entirely self-taught and my pots look it, cheerfully.

  website@twoleftthumbs

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  Woad & Weft

  Textiles & accessories

  I keep an indigo vat going in my back yard and feed it like a sourdough starter, which is exactly as odd as it sounds. Everything I dye is shibori: bound, folded or stitched before it goes in, then unpicked wet to reveal the pattern. I dye linen napkins, cotton bandanas, silk scarves and a small run of cushion covers. The blue oxidises from green to indigo in front of you as it comes out of the vat, and I bring a small vat to markets to demonstrate.

  website@woadandweft