Designer-Makers of the East End with Dan Cruikshank

This is an excursion behind the scenes in London’s oldest and most exciting hive of designer-makers to discover why it’s such a hotbed of creative endeavour. The day-long tour will take us from a private Spitalfields home, where 17th-century Huguenot weavers spun their famous silks, to the studios of cutting-edge design collectives who are reviving and reinventing traditional practices for the future. We’ll meet independent makers and designers in their studios. They will show us their making processes and talk about the philosophies that drive them. 

The tour is co-curated and led by Sarah Douglas of Liminal Space. 

Dan Cruickshank: the art historian, broadcaster and Spitalfields local, will set the scene for the day by telling the story of the East End's rich history of design and manufacture over the centuries, and why it has always been a hub for inventors and makers.

Timothy Everest MBE: once apprenticed to Tommy Nutter – 1960s tailor to the Beatles and the Stones -- Everest now makes bespoke clothes for today’s rock stars and art dealers, whom he encourages to dress as (in)appropriately as the fancy takes them. 

Marianna Kennedy: highly acclaimed furniture and interior designer. We’ll get to visit her exceptional Georgian house and studio. 

Town House Window: In between studio visits, we’ll break for a picnic lunch in the kitchen of an original Spitalfields weaver’s workshop, now the home and gallery of a respected antiques dealer. We’ll tour the extraordinary private house above the gallery, hear about its history and sample cakes baked to an old Huguenot recipe.

Rupert Blanchard: furniture designer and bespoke shopfitter to Ally Capellino and Melrose & Morgan. One of the most exciting re-inventors of reclaimed materials around. 

7 Upholstery: favoured furniture upholsterer for the leading lights of the art and architecture world. 

Tomasz Donocik : one of the world’s most exquisitely inventive jewellery creators. Hilary Alexander wrote in The Telegraph that Donocik ‘is determined to spearhead a new way for men to wear jewellery.’ We’ll learn about the process behind his often-surreal designs that are inspired by architecture and literature.

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