Alida Baxter

Renowned London journalist and author

View from Soho,

Shops

Shopping. At Oxford Circus people surge up from the Underground, get off buses or out of taxis and plough along Oxford Street , or crowd down Regent Street to meet their opposite numbers coming up from Piccadilly. Wherever they're heading and whatever they want to buy, they will probably find it or the space where it was a few minutes ago. If you want to shop, here is the Mecca provided you are sensible about it. Because at some times of year it can be as easy as going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Be nice to yourself I sympathise with you. I know that you may feel stressed when you come to the West End. I know that the streets and the pavements will be dug up, that the traffic will be solid, that people with foreign accents will ask you the way to Carnaby Street when they're standing in it, and other shoppers will knock you sideways with their bunches of huge carrier bags.

But take a deep breath. Remind yourself to come back again another time, when the West End will reveal charms that you may miss when you've been taken over by consumer frenzy. All these shopping streets will be so much more interesting when you're not shopping yourself. Positively lithe when you aren't strung around with bulging cardboard and bag-for-life plastic, you won't just be better able to slip between the crowds, you'll be able to do a bit of standing and staring, which is what I'm going to recommend.

In Regent Street , for instance, just down from Oxford Circus. Yes, there is a magnificent Apple store, and I agree the Mac range on show is mouthwatering, but I want you to consider it from the other side of the street. And instead of looking through the huge windows, stand and look at them they are enclosed by four tall rounded arches and up to the building's second storey. Then you'll see what I've been intrigued by every time I've passed this facade, ever since I can remember.

Running along above the hubbub are the most extraordinary, beautiful, intricate mosaics. Their colours are lovely: red and blue and white and above all, everywhere, surrounding the creatures and inscriptions, enclosing the tops of the arches, gold. The shields and devices, beginning from the left, are English, starting with the City of London , but on the right the names become Italian. And so much is worked into the riot of it all the cross of St. George, a portcullis, heraldic lions (one of them winged), a small, delicate horseman and what has always fascinated me most, the names of cities, framed in red and scrolls and curls of gold.

Paris , reads the script above the right-hand designs, New York , St. Petersburg , Berlin . Names that were magical when the mosaics were first created, and still have magic to-day. But what, I used to wonder, was in the building originally what business was so important that it had connections all around the world?

An engraving on the frontage tells you that Regent House was erected in 1898, and that's borne out by the evidence of the mosaics: the VR on the crowned lion (the Royal coat of arms, with its Dieu et mon Droit) tells us that this was made in Victoria 's reign.

And do trust your eyes, because investigating this building on the Internet will confuse you utterly. You'll read that Dr. Antonio Salviati was an early tenant, which would have been a good trick, because by 1898 he'd been dead for eight years! And he couldn't have been here any earlier, because the Hanover Chapel was on this site until 1896!

But he had founded a company in 1866 and what we're looking at, I believe, is the demonstration of the firm's artistry that was set like a sign over its London shop.

Born in 1816, Dr. Salviati designed and manufactured mosaics, and was hugely responsible for the revival of the glass and mosaic industry. Internationally famous, he worked on the mosaics of the Albert Memorial and in St. Paul 's Cathedral, and one of the symbols above the arches in Regent Street is that for Murano, the centre of the Venetian glass industry. He was world renowned, so of course the names of the cities his company dealt with run in a ribbon above the shields and animals. But those names are only above the two arches on the right, nearest to Oxford Circus, as I have mentioned. The gold lozenges where you might expect other names, above the left-hand arches, are blank.

I knew they hadn't always been like that, but couldn't find anything to back me up, until I discussed the building with a friend recently.

A few decades ago he worked on the other side of Regent Street and, as fond of the mosaics as I've always been, used often to look at them. One day he saw a workman standing on scaffolding and knocking the mosaic words off the façade with a trowel! He was horrified, but couldn't stop what had already happened, and no-one did anything about repairing the damage. A company that had no connection with anyone presently in the building had ordered this done, and the lost words have never been replaced. Again, the Internet fails us, because we're told the mosaics were restored in 1999. Maybe, but no-one seems to have considered what was there before a workman hacked away with a trowel. Perhaps there was no record of the original facade, and, if not, isn't that incredible? After surviving two World Wars and the Blitz, the mosaics were desecrated nearly a hundred years after their making and now are gone forever. Didn't anyone ask themselves about the blank lozenges of plain gold, which should so obviously have had something on them?

My friend tells me that the building's missing the names of other cities, (just as I'd thought I recalled) but neither of us can remember which they were. Rome , Budapest , Cairo ? We tried reciting some but couldn't be sure. So, think of your own favourites why not? Let your imagination make the missing links in the fairytale chain.

After all, even what is left is amazing. Imagine what those distances meant in Victorian times, and how far-reaching was the company's fame.

The mosaics may go unnoticed to-day by the crowds who hurry beneath them, but for me they still have utter fascination, and Dr. Salviati and his successors in the company must have had genius. If ever a building should have some plaque or sign on it, some dedication to explain the origins of the mosaics, this one should. But at least, reading this, and (I hope) going to look at it, you'll know. And, for now at least, that will have to be enough.

© Alida Baxter

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