The Crumbly Kitchen

This space is not a difficult space to deal with apart from having to create a lot of the crumbly brick effect.    The (slight) problem is in trying to remember what few items were tucked away in the corners to give it character.   Thankfully my sister did a quick sketch when we visited so hopefully that will tell me what I need.

As for layout, as seen in the picture below (thanks again, Ben Rea* for your amazing drawings), the crumbly kitchen is on the left of the cross section and the working kitchen on the right.    As I've placed the Courtyard outside on the left, I've swapped the kitchens around.

* Copyright Ben Rea

According to the book 18 Folgate Street that we bought relating to the RL property, this space was part of the original building on this land and shows excavations.

This is the original text as written by Dennis Severs.    The house’s ten rooms harbour ten ‘spells’ that engage the visitor’s imagination in moods that dominated the periods between 1724 – 1914.   Your senses are your guide.

Room One:   The Cellar.   You begin in the dark by discovering a crater in which are fragments of St Mary’s Spital, AD 1197, and hence the name “Spitalfields”. *

*Taken from the Dennis Sever website - with thanks for their permission to use.

I have also taken the liberty of swapping elements around to make the best use of space.   By rights, the excavations should be on the left as shown above but I hope I've included everything to give the general feel of the original.

So, this is what's been happening -

Lots of bricks and logs

A window aperture was created and, as there is no real window space on the side wall, I hunted down an outside picture that, I hope, fits the bill.

Then of course I had to have a little play while waiting on the wooden ceiling varnish to dry and to check that my "excavations" were in the correct place.

More work on the Crumbly Kitchen has taken place since these photos were taken as I had to wait for some deliveries.    There are a couple of points to note, namely the siting of the excavations.     For my purposes I had to place the window and all relevant bits to the right of the room which meant swapping round other items on view.    This was because I'd swapped Kitchens around and no-one would come out of a crumbly kitchen onto a Courtyard.    Apart from that, all elements in the room remain the same.    I have also added a couple of lights.    There is no lighting in the Crumbly Kitchen of the real building but it wouldn't do to have done all this work and no one able to see it!

The excavations had to be built up gradually while the glue dried.

The assembled excavations.

I had to guess what would be in the corner opposite the shelved unit as I didn't have any information regarding this space.

If you look closely - to the top right of the window - there is a spider caught in the web.

For fun, and for a comparison with the original photo, I've taken this picture from (hopefully) the same angle as the original and altered it to black and white.

and finally, a reminder of the inspirational photo shown previously of the original kitchen*.

*Copyright Roelof Bakker with many thanks for his permission to use this photograph.