Temptation Too Close to Home

I've been looking forward to visiting 19 Princelet Street ever since I found out about it back in the spring of 2005. Unfortunately, it has extremely limited opening days (it was only open on a total of eighteen days in 2006) and I was very excited to find out that today was one of them. 19 Princelet Street is an unrestored eighteenth-century house whose fragility is the main reason its opening days are so limited--they are actively raising funds and support for restoring the building and reopening it as an immigration museum, but until then, limited openings or prearranged group visits are the only ways for the public to see this incredible place. The building contains many immigrant histories, courtesy of the numerous generations of people from a range of origins who have had their residence traced to the address, and even houses a small synagogue, under the dramatic cracked stained-glass ceiling that runs the length of the large room. While the building (the one with the cream-coloured ground floor) has a fairly ordinary exterior by London standards, the interior is absolutely amazing, especially in its unrestored state. Unfortunately, photographs are not allowed, so I don't have anything else to show you, but the house is one of the most interesting places I've visited in London, and I highly recommend you visit it if you can. (They are open for a week in June and then usually have the remainder of the year's openings in September.) The house is very close to Spitalfields Market, so after I left Princelet Street, I decided to get out of the rain and venture into the market, at the left of this photo (I always love the way the beautiful Christ Church Spitalfields looks when approaching the market from this direction):
As with yesterday's visit to Borough, it's been a long time since I've been to Spitalfields Market on its busiest day, Sunday. With the rainy, cold weather (is this really May? it feels like January!), crowds that might otherwise have been lounging in a park were enjoying the covered enticements of the market.
On Sundays, Spitalfields has the widest variety of goods on offer, including clothes,
crafts,
and food.
I also saw this fascinating sight at Spitalfields: Part of the current exhibit, Soundwaves, at Kinetica Museum, whose previous exhibit we thoroughly enjoyed, these shadows were cast by Pierre Bastien's wonderful Mecanologie installation of everyday objects (including a teapot, saw, toothbrushes, and scissors)
furiously alive with motor-propelled movement as they performed their "household orchestra." Just as I was leaving the market, I noticed some magic words on this shop window, did a double-take, and rushed inside to investigate, barely allowing myself to believe what I was seeing: PIERRE MARCOLINI. In London. So close to home. At London prices. Ouch. When I looked online to see what I could find out about the shop (which was very lovely inside, with a beautiful range of items stocking its few shelves), I was surprised to learn that it's owned by Jeanette Winterson, author of the brilliant, wonderful, fantastic novel The Passion. Winterson's account of how Verde's came to be mentions how "everything on sale at Verde's comes from small co-operatives or family-run firms, except for the Pierre Marcolini chocolates, which are the finest in the world" (her superlative, not mine, although I do agree). If everything else is as well-chosen as the chocolates, then this must be a shop of treasures. If you are in Spitalfields, please say hello to my beloved Pierre for me . . .