Tag: Ferdia Carr

  • Wild and Woolly craft shop opens in Lower Clapton

    Anna Feldman in her Wild and Woolly shop
    Anna Feldman in her Wild and Woolly shop

    Whenever I walk past a wool shop, I stare in the window and a have a brief moment of longing. Perhaps it’s because I had a fling with knitting as a child, perhaps it’s because I’m simple and bright colours attract me, like a magpie.

    Or perhaps it’s because, as Wild and Woolly owner Anna Feldman suggests, knitting and crafting offer a remedy to the mental and existential fatigue brought on by spending half your life prodding a computer screen.

    Anna packed in her years working in web design, but has opened Hackney’s newest knit shop to indulge her passion for the craft. “It’s a departure from working online,” she says. “Being online all the time has its frustrations, there’s something very real about making things with your hands, that people can enjoy.”

    True to that departure from the digital, every available space on Wild and Woolly’s walls is dedicated to the handicraft – no modern trickery can bypass the patience it takes to weave a ball of wool into ear muffs.

    The most advanced contraption available inside is a wooden hand-cranked mechanism for balling up yarn. There are more variations of needle than I knew were necessary and more types of wool stuffed into the displays than I knew existed, from Aran through to Alpaca. Anna sources as much of it locally as she can.

    The Alpacas aren’t even from the Andes, they’re lucky enough to live in the Lake District. Some of the goods are sourced as close as Leytonstone and Shacklewell Road.

    The ambition is for Wild and Woolly to have a collaborative local role. “My idea is having a place where people come and knit, the cliché is it’s a close knit community” she laughs, conscious of the pun. “It’s a place where people can come and work it all out together”. Far from being a woolly pipe dream, Anna brings forward her experience working with victims of torture for the Helen Bamber foundation. There she found that having a craft to work on helped people open up and have an identity beyond their trauma. “There is something therapeutic that happens between the lines,” she says.

    The shop will hold classes from beginner’s level to advanced, taking you through tea cosies all the way to woolly jumpers, whether it’s for your nephew’s first birthday of your a Christmas pub crawl. With the prospect of the week’s work ahead in front of a computer screen, I bought some needles and yarn of my own. Anna even taught me how to start my thread. A true testament to her patience, believe me.

    Wild and Woolly Shop
    116 Lower Clapton Road
    Hackney
    E5 0QR

     

  • Robert Capa review – prints of Europe 1943-1945

     “Lovers’ Parting near Nicosia, Sicily”, 28 July, 1943. Silver gelatin print on glossy fibre paper, printed on 20 August, 1943 Robert Capa © ICP / Magnum Photos Courtesy: Galerie Daniel Blau Munich/London

    “Lovers’ Parting near Nicosia, Sicily”, 28 July, 1943. Silver gelatin print on glossy fibre paper, printed on 20 August, 1943 Robert Capa © ICP / Magnum Photos. Courtesy: Galerie Daniel Blau Munich/London

    In the man’s own words: “If your photos aren’t good enough, you’re not getting close enough.” The collection at the Daniel Blau gallery, ‘Europe 1943-1945’, shows Robert Capa’s work got as close to the front lines as any photojournalist since, and closer still to the people who fought and lived through the Second World War.

    Showcasing some 58 vintage prints, the exhibition begins from the shores of Sicily, as the Hungarian photographer accompanied the Allied push through southern Italy as far as Naples. Then, leaving one front for another, Capa accompanied the second wave of American troops to hit Omaha beach, Normandy on D-Day in 1944. The final leg of this journey winding through war-torn France, documenting scenes of re-emergence and retribution.

    Untarnished since their original development 71 years ago, the images capture not just the terrible cost and circumstance of war. They capture living moments, stills of everyday life, of liberation and joy, drama and death; pictures of lovers and families accompany pictures of action and destruction in this collection. The power and timelessness of Capa’s life work, within all of this, was his ability to frame and project the relationship between the subjects of his photographs with one another and with the viewer.

    His sense of scene and moment has produced world renowned photojournalism, several of his best
    known pieces on display at the Daniel Blau Gallery. The black and white collection, some of which have newly been recognised as Capa’s, range in price from £1,300 to £8000. Whether you plan to take a part of the man’s work home or not, experiencing the legendary social documentarian’s work for free, much of it on display for the first time, is a rare chance that shouldn’t be missed.

    Capa
    Europe 1943 – 1945
    Until 10 May
    Daniel Blau Gallery, 51 Hoxton Square, EC2A 3AY