Bex Shaw sent me these affectionate drawings of familiar East End shops (with a couple further afield), some rendered in ink and wash and others drawn on a computer, yet all celebrating the vernacular delights of traditional shopfronts
Rinkoff’s Bakery, Whitechapel, E1
“I have enjoyed drawing shopfronts and and market stalls since childhood, I have always liked looking at arrangements of things! I remember enjoying the huge piles of fruit and vegetables and the tiled doorstep of the local greengrocers when I was quite small. My great-grandfather was a sign painter and designer of shops, but it was from my granny who went to art school in the thirties that I learned my love of drawing. I am always drawn to the ways in which shopkeepers and stallholders place things, whether a deliberate aesthetic sense or the higgledy-piggledy delight of a pound shop.” – Bex Shaw
Chatsworth Rd Laundrette, Hackney, E5
Hunky Dory Vintage Clothes, Brick Lane, E1
Verdes, Brushfield St, Spitalfields, E1 (Recently moved to Fournier St)
Tatty Devine, Brick Lane, E1
The Foam Shop, Swanfield St, E2
The Hackney Draper, Chatsworth Rd, Hackney, E5
Joe’s Confectionery Stores, (now Deborah Woolf Vintage Clothes) Church St, Marylebone, NW8
The Blackbird Tearooms, 30 Ship St, Brighton
Drawings copyright © Bex Shaw