Norton & Sons make a Museum of London tweed suit for Tinie Tempah

The Museum of London's curator of fashion, Timothy Long, is on a mission to establish London as the historic creative centre of menswear. I mentioned the development of a Museum of London tweed, designed for the current Sherlock Holmes exhibition, in a previous blog post. For London Collections:Men, starting on Friday this week, a suit has been made for Tinie Tempah from Museum of London tweed by Patrick Grant's Norton & Sons of Savile Row.

Tinie Tempah with Patrick Grant at a suit fitting, image Museum of London

Tinie took a major role in the design and the suit features a horseshoe waistcoat, tapered trousers and a slim-fit single-breasted jacket with a flash of golden-yellow lining. He will wear the suit at LC:M and it will then be acquired by the museum for their fashion and textiles collection (which now contains over 20,000 objects and records London's place at the centre of the development of modern menswear).

Museum of London
Norton & Sons
London Collections:Men

BRIDGE - an exhibition celebrating London's bridges at The Museum of London Docklands

Today the Museum of London Docklands opens BRIDGE, an exhibition celebrating the history and importance of London's bridges. Without the River Thames and its bridges, there would be no London and without London the world would have been a much poorer place; literally and metaphorically.

This original Fox Talbot 1845 image of Old Hungerford Bridge will be on limited display - its first ever public showing

I was invited to the press launch on a Thames Clippers river bus, with art historian, Dan Cruickshank, giving a typically scholarly, gripping and totally off-the-cuff commentary on the bridges as we passed them. I was reminded that London's first bridge was built by the Romans over 2000 years ago near the modern London Bridge, that there was an earlier bridge in the Bronze Age, before London was thought of and that the engineering and design of bridges are a source of endless fascination. 

Many artists have become involved in the celebration, from young photographer, Lucinda Grange, who has recorded their hidden interiors, to Scanner, who is producing a sonic art installation. The exhibition and its satellite events are as diverse and fascinating as the history of the bridges themselves. And London's fascination with bridges is set to continue, hopefully, with the exciting proposal to build a Garden Bridge across the River near Waterloo to Temple (see here).

To find out more see the Museum of London Docklands website here. The exhibition is free and runs until 2nd November 2014.

I'm a great fan of the Museum of London and recommend visits to each of their centres to relish the richness of London's history, its present and future. See THE MUSEUM OF LONDON.

Blackfriars Bridge 1789/90 - ink and watercolour

Inside London Bridge - Lucinda Grange 2014

A windy evening on London Bridge - Henry Turner 1937

London Bridge - Barry Lewis (1970s?)