THE AREA OF LONDON around Strand and Aldwych has always fascinated me, so I was intrigued to be approached by One Aldwych to be one of their cultural curators.
One Aldwych describes itself as the hotel for Londoners at Heart (wherever they are from). It stands at the junction of Strand, Aldwych and Waterloo Bridge, occupying a unique triangular plot of land. It’s the building one sees dead ahead, when crossing Waterloo Bridge to the north, sitting at the heart of London’s theatre district. Aldwych is just a stone’s throw from Covent Garden, where I began my career as a street portrait artist some decades ago.
An Invisible History
The reason the area fascinates me is that, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Strand was home to a huge number of silhouettist’s studios. Today, their works are highly sought-after collector’s items, representing to some the high-renaissance of silhouette art.
In those days Strand was known as the artistic quarter of London. It was a wide cobbled street, lined on each side with tall, thin, seventeenth-century buildings in various states of disrepair. These formed the studios and shop fronts for a wide variety of artists, artisans and crafts people. Visitors to London came to stroll the wide boulevard and choose which artist to visit that day.
In the mid nineteenth century the Victorians cleared away all these old studios in an early example of planned inner-city redevelopment. The development included the creation of Trafalgar Square, rebuilding Strand, creating Aldwych and a new bridge over the Thames (Waterloo Bridge).
By the time this happened most silhouettists had already gone out of business, unable to compete with the new science of photography, so the area was ripe for redevelopment. However, this means that the history which so fascinates me has essentially become invisible. Not one brick remains of the studios of so many artists who have had a formative influence on my own work.
So What’s a Curator?
One Aldwych describes their Curators as a collection of voices from the local community. The idea is to give visitors to London a sense of surprise and discovery as they get under the skin of London, enabling them to tread a little outside the well-beaten tourist routes.
My duties as a cultural curator include writing some blog articles for their website (and yes, I can write about silhouettes), suggesting a series of seasonal tips, and offering some silhouette related experiences for visitors to the hotel. I’ll post more articles about my experiences at One Aldwych, as well as links to any blogs, as they arise.
