antidotes

‘Fashion City’ at the Museum of London Docklands is the perfect antidote to ‘Unravel’. It has restored my faith in textiles exhibitions, curators, and explanatory labels, and all without the need of a big slice of millionaire’s shortbread, although they do a nice mug of tea in the cafe there.

[from the catalogue]

The exhibition doesn’t exactly trumpet itself loudly, and the website underplays its breadth and richness. It’s had a few reviews but nothing in major publications, and it took a recommendation of a friend to really convince me to go. The museum is in a wonderful old yellow brick warehouse next to the tall shiny towers of Canary Wharf (necessitating for me a trip on the Elizabeth Line which was v exciting: glimpsing Chantal Joffe’s platform artworks at Whitechapel, and admiring the canary-yellow glass sides of the escalators) so a little out of the orbit of the West End). The exhibition was due to close this weekend, but it’s been extended until July, and I can see why.

[Tailor’s workshop, Museum of London photo]

It’s utterly fascinating and tells some excellent stories many of which were surprises to me.

[knitting in rows at the JFS]

It takes a deeply serious subject and manages to make the visitor aware of all the complicated, difficult, and sensitive aspects of the Jewish garment trade in London, yet at the same time offers an imaginatively structured introduction with a large degree of positivity and a nice lightness of touch. Plus, the clothes are just fabulous and what I loved is that it’s not all V&A/celebrity/couture stuff for thin, wealthy people, but a huge mix of high-street fashion, war-time suits, groovy 60s outfits, fabulously beaded frocks, bags, umbrellas, underwear, shoes, hats, and a few famous names (we really wanted a pink silk dressing-gown each after seeing the one made for Noël Coward). It was educational but also celebratory, and one of the highlights was the finding out how many amazing women set up their own independent labels and businesses. I came out wanting to go back, but also feeling like I’d taken restorative pill. Great catalogue, too.

Having got so close to Poplar through which we have driven without stopping innumerable times on our way to and from seeing Brockets in various parts of SE and E London, I wanted to finally get inside the magnificent 1933 Grade II listed Poplar Baths for a swim.

It’s much altered inside although there is some wonderful original tiling and the stairwells are nicely restored. The pool itself is a good place for peaceful lunchtime lengths.

I don’t watch Call the Midwife although I know it’s set in early post-war Poplar, and after the swim we walked through the parts which had been badly bombed, looking at the LCC housing and coming across, quite by happy chance, the 1951 Festival of Britain showpiece school which I’d written about on the Persephone Post.

It was closed but I was able to press my nose up against the glass and admire the brilliant Peggy Angus tiles which are in beautiful condition, 70+ years on

- quite a contrast to the badly marked Elizabeth line platform walls at Farringdon station which are less that two years old - all those £££££ spent and did no-one know/suggest the fancy pale materials were perhaps not best suited to being in contact with heads and clothes all day long?? The rubbings remind me of Cornelia Parker’s Stolen Thunder, Tarnish 1997/8, a set of cloths with marks produced by polishing silverware that belonged to famous villains or heroes, or the shadows of Playmobil figures with hats.

Then onto E5 Poplar Bakehouse via Bartlett Park. I’m not a huge fan of parks as in parks with swings set on concrete, paddling pools empty of water but full of leaves and debris, and benches for weed-smokers. But Barlett Park, created in the early 1950s on a vast bomb-site, is less a park, more a big, green, open, public space with swathes of spring bulbs planted in grass alongside the curving paths and the promise of wildflowers to come. And the E5 Bakehouse - next to the Limehouse Cut, built 1770, oldest canal in London - looks onto it. Great bread and soup, amazing brownies, good value, nice views.

So I’m full of the joys of spring here, with local sightings of apple blossom, hawthorn, lilac, and cowslips. Plus our very own antidote to winter: Thursday’s tulips.

Happy Sunday!