Author: Dee Dee

Organic Cotton at the Brokedown Palace

Posted on by Dee Dee

Organic cotton is usually rain-fed, not irrigated, so it uses a lot less water. It’s grown without the use of toxic pesticides and insecticides. Farmers use composted manures and cover-crops to replace synthetic fertilisers. Innovative weeding strategies are used instead of herbicides. Beneficial insects and trap-crops are used to control pests. Some farmers use natural pesticides such as chilli – just like in our wildflower Seedballs!

Agrocel cotton farmers – where the organic cotton for our People Tree dresses comes from

Some of the organic cotton products we sell:

People Tree

People Tree Ellie Bouquet Dress

The Brokedown Palace Tote

THE BROKEDOWN PALACE OFFICIAL TOTE BAGTHE BROKEDOWN PALACE OFFICIAL TOTE BAG

Building a Future for Africa Bake Off

Posted on by Dee Dee

We were invited to take part in a bake off organised by friend of the palace, Lizzie White to raise funds for BAFFA (Building A Future For Africa).

BAFFA is an Aid Camps International project, in which a team of fifteen volunteers will travel to Cameroon in January 2014 for three weeks to build a school.

Our entry was a chocolate Brokedown Palace filled with cookies – and it was the winner!


Here’s how we did it…

The cabin is made using a Lakeland ‘Fairy Tale Cottage’ mould. We melted the chocolate in Granny’s mixing bowl, over a pan of boiling water.

Then we poured the chocolate into the mould and left it to set. It’s best to do this at room temperature, which takes about 2 hours. You can speed it up in the fridge but you risk the chocolate blooming (turning white-ish).

 

When the chocolate had set we placed the pieces on a cake board and piped melted chocolate along the edges to cement  them together. We then decorated it with icing flowers and desiccated coconut.

 

For the miniature cookies to go inside we used Granny’s super easy recipe:

Ingredients

  • 100g of sugar
  • 100g of butter
  • 1 tbsp of golden syrup
  • 75g of self raising flour
  • Chocolate chips
  • Another 75g of self raising flour

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees.
  2. Mix the sugar and butter together to make a paste.
  3. Add the golden syrup.
  4. Add the first 75g of flour and chocolate chips. Mix together.
  5. Add and mix the last 75g of flour.
  6. Arrange on a baking tray in small blobs, don’t flatten them.
  7. Put them in the oven at 180 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

 

The cabin can be made from gingerbread too. We’ll be trying that next time…

 

If you’d like to donate to the project you can do it on  Lizzie’s Aid Camps  page.

 

Lost in London Pop-Up: Bringing Outdoors In

Posted on by Dee Dee

We’ve just started stocking the fantastic Lost in London book, so we were excited to see they were doing a ‘bringing the outdoors in’ pop-up event at Hackney City Farm as part of Chelsea Fringe. We went along to have a look and found some wonderful stallholders and most importantly delicious cakes!

Lost in London’s own stall with all their publications

The Borough Belles WI with their amazing stall of homemade cakes. I had a luscious rhubarb crumble cup cake.

Marshmallow Bunny made by The Borough Belles WI – apparently it’s traditional in Australia!

We loved Sarah May Rogers hand made ceramics – her bone china leaves are exquisite and made using real leaves.

The lovely folks from Peachy Gardening  – an East London based business that offers friendly reliable gardening services. They were selling some gorgeous ready-planted pots at the event.

These greetings cards from Urban Ladybird  are genius – they have seeds in the card and can be planted straight into the ground.

Ian marking his favourite green space on the map – he chose Wick Woodland which is opposite The Brokedown Palace.

No trip to Hackney City Farm is complete without visiting Larry the Donkey, the only donkey we know of to have his own Twitter account. Follow him @hackneycityfarm

 

Love the Lea

Posted on by Dee Dee

CITIZEN SCIENTISTS – WATER TESTING

The Brokedown Palace is on the banks of the River Lea in Hackney Wick, London. The Lea and the Lea Valley were the original inspiration for The Brokedown Palace, and continue to inspire us everyday. Parts of the Lee Valley Park are a SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) as there are many rare species of plants and wildlife here. It’s amazing to have such a space in the heart of the city, and we feel it’s very important to protect it.

Sadly the River Lea and its tributaries are the most polluted in Britain – sewage, chemicals and oil wash into them every day. This is an issue close to our hearts, so when we heard that Theo Thomas from Thames 21 Charity had set up the Love the Lea campaign we contacted him to see if we could get involved. He suggested that we could form part of a water testers group he was setting up – Citizen Scientists who would regularly test the water at different points along the river. This data could be used to form an early warning system, and build up a clearer picture of the Lea’s health.

We formed a  team and Theo came round to give us our testing kits to show us how it’s done.

River Lea
Adam getting some river water for us to test

River Lea
Filling our test tubes with river water


Adam and Rosie putting the tablets in the test tubes


Theo explains how to get the results


Phosphate level was 2, the blue looks pretty but it’s bad news for the Lea.

A Phosphate level of 1 is considered ‘bad’ by the EU Water Framework Directive. We can all help reduce river Phosphate levels by buying Phosphate free cleaning products, dishwasher tablets and detergents.


Nitrate level was 20. This indicates sewage and chemicals in the water.

Not surprising with Deephams sewage works up river at Tottenham regularly (legally) discharging raw sewage into the Lea.  Also the many domestic misconnected pipes which are sending sewage into the river. Excessive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus can cause reduced dissolved oxygen levels in the water, depriving other organisms of oxygen. Increased levels of these nutrients have also been known to cause toxic algal blooms, it also encourages duckweed. The Lea in summertime is covered in duckweed. Excess duckweed is bad for the river because it means that natural oxygen transfer from the atmosphere is greatly reduced, which is very damaging to fish.


The Ph was 8 which is within the normal range.

We’ll continue to test the water every two weeks and keep you up to date with the results.

WHAT CAN YOU DO? 

  • If you see anything in your local area that looks like pollution ring the Environment Agency incident hotline on 0800 80 70 60. They will investigate it.
  • Pledge to LOVE THE LEA with Thames 21
  • Use Phosphate-free household products – most supermarkets do a range or try Ecover
  • Download this handy LOVE THE LEA information leaflet and share with friends and family
  • Check your household connections – most people whose pipes are misconnected have no idea they are discharging sewage and waste water into our rivers. More information on connectright.org.uk
  • Like LOVE THE LEA on Facebook
  • Follow @TheoJThomas on Twitter and hashtags #lovethelea and #leatest to keep up-to-date with the LOVE THE LEA campaign

For more information contact Theo Thomas: theo.thomas@thames21.org.uk  020 7093 6385

 

Francis Cugat’s Great Gatsby Book Cover

Posted on by Dee Dee
Francis Cugat’s 1925 ‘Celestial Eyes’ design for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby is one of the most iconic book covers of all time. It’s also unusual in that the artwork influenced the story. Cugat finished the illustration before the final manuscript was submitted, and Fitzgerald wrote to his editor Maxwell Perkins, “For Christ’s sake don’t give anyone that jacket you’re saving for me. I’ve written it into the book.”
By saying that he’d “written into the book” could Fitzgerald have meant narrator Nick Carraway’s description of Daisy as a “‘girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs’ of New York at night.” Or perhaps the eyes of Dr TJ Eckleburg on a giant billboard in the valley of ashes?
My guess is the former, I think the eyes of Dr TJ Eckleburg are too integral to the story to have been added for the final draft.
The eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg from The Great Gatsby (dir. Jack Clayton, 1974)
The eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg from The Great Gatsby, Jack Clayton, 1974
Daisy’s face is described by narrator Nick Carraway in the book as “sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth.” Dr. T.J. Eckleberg’s eyes are “blue and gigantic…they look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose.” Cugat’s illustration seems to combine these two images, though primarily I think it is Daisy.
Perhaps the triangular composition of the disembodied face with no nose represents the love triangle of Daisy, Tom and Gatsby. Or Myrtle (Tom’s mistress), Tom and Daisy.
If you look closely you can see the pupils of the eyes are stylised reclining female nudes – perhaps representing Daisy in Gatsby’s eyes?
The green light on Daisy's dock, from The Great Gatsby, Jack Clayton, 1974
The green light on Daisy’s dock, from The Great Gatsby, Jack Clayton, 1974
The green tear streaming from her eyes in the illustration is like the light “that burns all night” at the end of Daisy’s dock, representing the American dream tantalisingly just out of Gatsby’s reach. It’s reflected in the water on the illustration, just as it’s reflected in the sound between Daisy’s and Gatsby’s houses in the book.
The Great Gatsby is full of light motifs with parties illuminated by “enough coloured lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden.” Nick sees “the whole corner of the peninsula . . . blazing with light” from Gatsby’s house “lit from tower to cellar.” When Nick tells Gatsby that his place “looks like the World’s Fair,” Gatsby proposes that they “go to Coney Island.”
This is represented in the fairground image on the illustration, which also perhaps symbolises the bright lights of New York City.
New York City from The Great Gatsby, Baz Luhrmann, 2013
 
Francis Cugat’s original 1925 gouache painting
Our Great Gatsby Out of Print t-shirt featuring the book cover
I’m a huge fan of the book and the 1974 film, so I’m interested to see Luhrmann’s film when it comes out in the UK on May 16th. It will be the fifth film adaptation of the novel. I’ll leave you with the trailer.

 

 

Out Of Print

Posted on by Dee Dee
We are very pleased to be stocking Out of Print t-shirts from Brooklyn, New York City. Their t-shirts feature iconic and often out of print book covers. They work closely with artists, authors and publishers to license the content that ends up in their collections. For each t-shirt sold, one book is donated to a community in need through their partner Books For Africa.

 

Wool House

Posted on by Dee Dee

We at The Brokedown Palace LOVE wool, so we were very excited to visit ‘the world’s biggest ever celebration of Wool’
– Campaign for Wool‘s Wool House at Somerset House.

Woolen trees at the entrance, even the pots are made from wool

Wool Planters by Wooly Shepherd – even the pots are made from wool!

Hummingbird Wallhanging by Alexander McQueen – The Rug Company (photo courtesy The Rug Company)

Crochetdermy Brown Bear by Shauna Richardson

Scoured British Wool and unscoured Merino

Real Shetland fawn top. This is the wool that our Real Shetland throws are made from!

Wool Chair and lamp

WOOL letters with woven rug by Jason Collingwood

Tabletop loom demonstration

‘Composition Blue Composition Yellow’ tapestry by Claudy Jongstra 

Spinning wheels – the hand held style was used in Tudor times

Bedroom by Kit Kemp with Vi-Spring Bed

V-Spring mattress filled with Real Shetland wool, the same wool as our Real Shetland throws!

Classic Drawing Room by Fox Linton Associates

Metal Sheep and Lamb in Classic Drawing Room by Harriet Mead

Our favourite – the Natural Room by Josephine Ryan

I loved the Nursery by Donna Wilson

Pendleton cushions and blankets – we will soon be stocking Pendleton at The Brokedown Palace so watch this space!