Over all the years I have frequented the Spitalfields Antiques Market every Thursday, I have succeeded in buying almost nothing, tempering my acquisitive tendencies by writing the stories of more than two hundred stallholders instead.
Yet last week, I found this eighteenth century Sun Fire Insurance plaque and could not resist buying it. When I was a child, my mother used to point these out to me on old houses and all this time I have been searching for one of my own. Apparently, the insurance company adopted this symbol which had always been used traditionally on buildings to avert the evil eye. One day, I will nail it up high on the front of my house.
During the lockdown, St John Bread & Wine made wonderful pies every Friday which you could walk over to collect and take home to bake in your own oven. These weekly pies became emotional landmarks that sustained me through those trying times and I missed them so much when lockdown ended that I was converted into a piemaker.
Now I bake a pie every Wednesday as a mid-week landmark to counterpoint Sunday dinner each weekend. Of course, I needed a pie funnel and I was overjoyed to find this fine thirties’ specimen, designed by Clarice Cliff I am assured, for ten pounds in the Spitalfields Market.
Ten years ago, I walked through the market in the late afternoon of the last trading day before Christmas, calling in to exchange greetings with some of the traders. While passing the time in idle chatter, I picked a up a smooth prehistoric stone axe head, cradling it in my palm absent-mindedly. How well it sat there in my hand.
The axe head was of British origin and approximately five thousand years old, I was informed. It certainly was a handsome piece of granite that I held, deep slate-blue, finely worked and veined with subtle lines. Immediately, by running your finger along the sharp edge and by clutching the smooth curves, you were in contact with all those numberless others who held it and appreciated it, going right back to the one who made it. This was not an axe designed for use but to demonstrate the painstaking skill of the maker, and of value as a gift or token of high status. This axe had always been prized and I could not resist prizing it myself, as I found my fingers closed naturally over it.
There is a paradoxical intimacy that I feel with whoever made my axe, since I can share their delight in pure sculptural form without ever knowing anything else. Whoever made this axe is lost in the all-enveloping darkness of history, but I shall keep it safe for them in my desk drawer. for my remaining years
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Spitalfields Antiques Market 1