Industry.
Hackney still has some industry. Each year more of it disappears to make way for more overpriced two-bedroom flats, but remnants of it persist. Around the corner from Arcane Studio, (where I do my etching), on the Hackney Road, is Daniel Lewis & Son, ‘OneStopMetalShop’. It was founded in 1797 supplying materials to carriage makers and still has some of the original shop fittings. It supplies metal and all sorts to local manufacturers, menders and makers of things. It won’t be there for much longer and I want to return to it in a later post.
I bought three 8 by 4 ft steel sheets here and carried them across the road (with help from Ian Steadman from Arcane studios), where Adam in his under-the-arches fabrication lair, cut them into pieces small enough to go into the cutter back at Arcane.
Arcane Studio is on one floor of a 1960s factory building in The Oval off Hackney Road, with a fantastic view of the gasworks on Regents Canal. It is about a mile west of Chisenhale and linked to it by the Canal. Ian has accumulated a collection of old presses and opened a printmaking studio there.
I feel as if I am immersing myself in East London’s Industrial Heritage, I may not be making anything useful, but I am making something, and it is big and requires a lot of metal and heavy physical work to make.
