STRANGE LONDON TRADES

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIX, Issue 4693, 14 May 1935, Page 8

STRANGE LONDON TRADES

o ROMANCE IN WICKER WORK. (By ,E. George in Brisbane Mail.) London is a city of many queer trades. There is a ißoyal Warrant Holder whose traditional privilege is to supply the King with lamprey pies, and a "horse milliner " who fashions blute rosettes for the Windsor greys to wear on State occasions. Making wicker frames for the Guards' busbies is one of the old and romantic crafts which flourish in odd corners ,off Charing Cross ißoad. Although the imposing busbies of Grenadiers —recently a familiar sight in New Zealand—owe their exotic appearance to bearskins imported front Russia, the foundation work is a craft so old that the story of London itself might be woven in with its wicker strands. The same firm which makes this guardsman's millinery pride of Hyde Park on a Sunday afternoon — was fashioning, a few centures ago, a hat for Nell Gwynne and a basket for Pepys. Gog and Magog, the f giants of the Guildhall, were originally wicker figures, and I like to think that their lost history is somewhere buried with the clay tablets whfch record its earliest accounts. CRINOLINES AND CRADLES. I was thinking of Australia and bush picnics when I went up the dark, narrow stairs which lead from, a lane into the quteer little showroom, for the stout wicker hampers which go out from this London workshop are familiar companions at " billy tea" all over the Commonwealth. Yet even if one off the firm had not happened to be solemnly trying on a wicker busby, • it wouIU have been quite clear at once that it was no ordinary workshop. The stock which filled the shelves and the floor of the showroom—gay chairs and garden tables, and equipment, for vast and luxurious picnicswas thoroughly modern; but sketches of crinoline frames and cradles .adorned the wall, and if the whitebearded foreman had shown me an order for an ark of bulrushes I

should, for the moment, have taken him seriously. The business of these "wicker workers of London," founded in times which are unrecorded, has passed from father to son in unbroken succession since 1699, and since no machinery invention has ever cut through its traditions of craftsmanship it is like some Rip Van Winkle of trades, which was never even faintly disturbed by the industrial revolution. Not that there has been any lack of enterprise in meeting the needs of the changing times. In 1854 the firm was putting on the market the new invention of " The Perambulator of Improved Carriage for Infants," as demonstrated in St. James' Park by the youngest member of the family. One of its latest products, a neat hand basket fitted with vacuumi flasks and sandwich tins, so .pleased the Queen that she ordered two dozen of them, whereat her loyal subjects immediately increased its sales by 250,000. ANCIENT ACCOUNTS. Seated upon a venerable high stgiol ih the office, I,was presently invited to examine the oldest of the account books which are still in existence. A great deal of the lighter side of social history is illustrated in its pages The first entry, " September 9, 1698, Lady Novel, two woodend bottomed chairs, two mops," tells us little except that the mops cost 2s. On the other hand there is a whole picture of early sixteenth century London in the entry which records the cleaning of a leghorn hat for "Mr Tod, ye line Guardman," and that which notes the debt of " W!ido Gardener over ye way." Childbed baskets were a leading line in 1700, but as all goods were made to order there is a pleasing and' picturesque variety in the entries, of which three, taken at random, are <v a large pair of Feet built upside down," " a fine square cradle," and " a Passover basket for Mrs Leven." The most startling sidelight on the domestic deficiencies of the sixteenth century is the frequency of an order described in all baldness as "one bugg basket." Only a few weeks ago a distinguished member of the House of Lords was complaining bitterly that a genteel reluctance to mention'

the very name of the mpst deplorable of insects was responsible for general wretchedness in large areas of London. Our predecessors had no such inhibitions. The basket that was ordered unblu&hingly for many notable houses was a wicker trap, to be fitted under a mattress, and is so described in some of the more detailed entries. FIRST PICNIC HAMPERS.-. Wicker frames for crinolines were in demand in a politer age. When the Crystal Palace was opened the first picnic hampers were made, but no provision was required for tea, as flasks for spirits and room for bottles met the simpler ideas of Victorian hostesses. Wicker frames for busbies were first made during the Crimean Wiar, and are still fashioned, after exactly the sam,e method, by the descendants of the workmen who first achieved the art. Another traditional privilege is the making of royal hampers. All the King's shooting party equipment and the store baskets which accompany the Prince of Wales and his brothers on their big game hulnting expeditions come from these small workrooms. An industry which has never succumbed to mass production naturally has a varied and picturesque sales list. Nobody would be surprised if you Walked in one morning and ordered a large dragon or a pair of outsize wicker feet. There is a dragon on order at the moment —for a new pantomime.—and miost London comedians have been fitted oiut at some time or other with larger and more humorous feet. AFIRICAN CHIEF'S ORDER. From the ends of the earth come customers who have to contend with travelling conditions calling for special store containers. An African chief who had just made the. acquaintance of canned music recently came in solemn state to order a strong basket to hold his wireless set and his gramophone, that he might not be parted from them in his journeys through the desert. He was so pleased with the result that he ordered fifty, so there are likely to be strange concerts under the African moon. Small square baskets, fitting into each other, aroused my momentary curiosity. The manager told me they had been ordered by " The Governor of sofrie comic little island in the Pacific " who had to make a round of island inspections by canoe, and required his stores' not to take much room. The older workmen —who will bring their sons in to learn the trade as their grandfathers did before them—look with supreme contempt on the claim that this is a machine age, for could not one and the sarnie machine make cradles and crinolines, wicker containers for lead coffins, dragons for pantoimime, and picnic hampers for a Queen ?.