Urban Makers Weekend Market — Saturday 26 September
By Urban MakersUp to 30 independent makers in the covered hall at Old Spitalfields. Free entry, 10am–5pm.
About this event
Where
Old Spitalfields Market
16 Horner Square, Spitalfields, London E1 6EW
Good to know
Free entry
No ticket needed — just turn up. Bring a bag for life.
Step-free access
The whole market is step-free with accessible toilets on site.
Getting here
Please travel by public transport or bike — there is no visitor parking.
Meet the makers
Foxglove Editions
Print & illustration
I make copperplate etchings, which means acid, aquatint and a lot of rag paper soaked overnight before printing. Each plate is bitten in stages to build the tones, then inked and wiped by hand for every single impression, so no two are quite the same weight of black. My subjects are folk tales retold with women who do the rescuing. Editions are small, usually twenty-five, and the plates are cancelled afterwards. I bring a plate to markets so people can see what causes the marks.
Ink & Iron Press
Print & illustration
I print letterpress on an Adana platen press that weighs more than I do, setting each line from trays of metal type. The work is mostly short: a phrase, a place name, a bit of overheard nonsense from the top deck of a bus. I print on cotton rag paper with a deep impression you can read with your fingers. Colours are mixed by hand from rubber-based inks. Everything is an edition of fifty or fewer, numbered in pencil on the back.
Kettle Drum Coffee
Food & drink
I roast on a 3kg drum roaster in a unit under the arches, usually three days a week, and I buy green coffee from two importers who publish what the farmer was paid. Everything is roasted to order for a market, so the bags on my table were done within four days. I keep it to three coffees at a time: a washed Ethiopian, a Brazilian for milk drinks, and whatever seasonal lot I am excited about. Bags are recyclable and I grind to order on the stall.
Moth & Moon Jewellery
Jewellery
My work is all lunar phases and moth wings, cut from silver sheet and given a satin brush finish.
Pickle Parade
Food & drink
I make the pickles I grew up eating in Poland, plus a few my English wife has talked me into. Dill cucumbers in a salt brine, sauerkraut with caraway, pickled beetroot, and a mustard piccalilli that is not remotely traditional but sells beautifully. Vegetables come from a wholesaler in Leyton and whatever the allotment gives me. Everything ferments in food-grade barrels in a cold garage, then goes into jars I sterilise myself. I bring open jars and cocktail sticks and expect people to try before they buy.
Porcelain Weather
Ceramics
Porcelain is a difficult, sulky material and I love it.
Signature & Spine
Stationery
I rebind damaged books and make blank journals in the same traditional structures. Full leather, quarter cloth, rounded and backed spines, headbands sewn in silk. The repairs come to me through word of mouth, usually a family bible or a cookbook that has fallen apart from being loved. For markets I bring journals and guest books bound in the same way, plus a few rescued volumes I have rebound speculatively. I letter spines with real gold leaf and a heated tool, which is unforgiving work.
The Balm Room
Bath & body
I infuse oils with herbs for six weeks in a sunny window before I make anything, which is the slow step everybody skips. Calendula for a nappy balm, comfrey for aching hands, plantain for bites and stings. From those oils I make small pots of balm with beeswax from a beekeeper in Kent. Everything is safety assessed by a cosmetic chemist and batch numbered, because I take that part seriously even at this scale. Tins are aluminium and I refill them at markets for a discount.
Verdigris & Vine
Jewellery
I cast tiny botanical things in silver and bronze: a hawthorn leaf from the canal path, an ash key, a curl of vine tendril. Each one is burned out of the mould, so the original plant is gone and the piece cannot be repeated exactly. I finish with a patina that leaves green in the veins, then polish the high points back by hand. Earrings, pendants and stacking rings, all on recycled metal, all made at a bench barely wider than my shoulders.
Wool & Wander
Textiles & accessories
I hand-knit hats, mittens and long socks on double-pointed needles, in undyed wool from a flock of Shetlands I visit once a year in Cumbria. The natural fleece colours give me eight shades without any dye at all, from near-white to a proper charcoal. Patterns are traditional Fair Isle motifs I learned from my grandmother, worked in the round with no seams. A pair of gloves takes about fifteen hours. I bring the wool undyed and knitted side by side so people can see the connection.
Organised by
Moderate refunds. Full refund available until 7 days before the event.
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