Urban Makers Weekend Market — Sunday 29 November
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
Bramble Metals
Jewellery
I work almost entirely in reticulated silver. You heat the sheet until the surface is about to collapse, and it ripples into a landscape you cannot fully control. Those sheets become signet-style rings, brooches and heavy pendants. I set the occasional rough-cut sapphire or a British-cut agate, always rub-over so nothing snags on a jumper. Customers tend to arrive wanting something that looks ancient rather than shiny, and that is exactly what the process gives me.
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.
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.
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.
Hearth & Hush
Candles & home fragrance
I pour into vessels I cast myself from jesmonite, in a speckled terrazzo made with crushed offcuts from previous batches.
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.
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.
Oat & Olive
Bath & body
My whole range started because my son has eczema and nothing on the shelves suited him. Everything is fragrance-free, made with colloidal oatmeal I grind myself and a high proportion of olive oil, and the ingredient lists are short enough to read in one breath. There is a body butter, a bath soak, a balm for hands that crack in winter and an unscented soap. It is not glamorous and it does not smell of anything, which turns out to be exactly what a lot of people want.
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.
Soot & Saffron
Candles & home fragrance
I hand-roll incense the way my aunt taught me, mixing powdered woods, resins and gums with water into a stiff paste, then rolling it onto bamboo sticks and drying them flat for a week. Nothing is dipped in fragrance oil, which is how most incense is made and why so much of it smells thin. My blends are frankincense and orange peel, sandalwood and saffron, and a heavy oud for winter. I sell them in bundles of thirty with a small ceramic holder.
Wayward Silver
Jewellery
I make jewellery for people who do not really wear jewellery. Plain bands with a hammered edge, one small stud rather than a pair, a pendant with nothing on it at all. It is deliberately quiet work and it takes discipline to leave things alone. Everything is recycled sterling, finished with a fine emery and a wax polish rather than a mirror shine, so it wears in instead of scratching up. I offer free resizing for life, which people find surprising.
Organised by
Moderate refunds. Full refund available until 7 days before the event.
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