Wall And Jones, on the very busy Hackney Road, an old tailor’s shop on a street corner (just over the street from Hackney City Farm and a stone’s throw from Colombia Road Flower Market). The two floors of the old shop has been the home of a small collective of rather strong designers for the last three or four years now. The place always looks good, the space is always alive with colour, with Victorian treasure, with vintage textiles cleverly fashioned, wonderfully fashioned, alive with handmade jewelry, with dressmaking, with wall hangings, giant flags and all kinds of found pieces of, well there is no other word than treasure, the two floors are alive with treasure.

We’ve been wanting to get in here and do something for ages, Emma Harvey and myself that is, Harvey and Worrall at Wall and Jones . The designers work in the space as well as well exhIbit and sell theIr work over the two floors. There’s three of them, brilliantly creative dressmaker Ali Jones (she uses her found fabric so gloriously well), and exquisite jewelry makers Halo Jones and Rosita Bonita (the two of them, indeed the three of them, compliment each other so deliciously well), the three of them in a brilliant “old tailor’s shop that has been transformed into a cabinet of curiosities, housing the two designers’ latest collections in an aesthetic of Victorian tatter”.  

Harvey and I had been wanting to get in here and do something from the moment curiosity dragged us both through the inviting door, and this weekend we got to.  Wall and Jones did offer to clear some space, but no, what we wanted to do was almost hide our pieces of canvas and such in there to be discovered in there with the almost forgotten objects and the vintage artifacts, the textures and the textiles, the colours and the hats and the old suit cases and the distressed frames and faded hats reborn and the postcards and flags and flowers and jewels…

The show was to happen over a weekend, a Friday opening followed by a Saturday (today) and a Sunday (tomorrow), a collection of recent artworks from the two of us in the cabinet of curiosities that is so so alive already.  Harvey’s circles, be them paintings, old 78 records in freshly painted sleeves, red-stitch embroidery, Worrall’s thorns and leaves and recent layers of growth. We’re half way through now and loving the reactions of people exploring the space and finding all kinds of treasure (and some of the art).  The exhibition ends at 6pm on Sunday, May 29th, do let curiosity allow you in should you be passing…   .  

Click on an image to enlarge and run the slide show, I’m sure you can work out which pieces are Harvey’s, which pieces Worrall and indeed which pieces were there already…. .