Now a firmly established and beloved fixture of the London calendar, Columbia Road’s Christmas Wednesdays hark back to the Dickensian charms of Christmases past. With its row of quaint Victorian houses and newly bedazzled streetlamps, the road was seemingly made for this time of year. We hope you join us before the run is out, for an evening of characterful, independent Christmas shopping in some of the most beloved small businesses in London. The local church will be wheeling their grand piano up and down the street for carols and the scent of mulled wine will waft through the air…

Another aspect of the Christmas season is the street-wide competition for the best window display. This year we are once again lucky to have ours populated by a veritable winter wonderland of animals. These harlequin rabbits, deer, and badgers are ‘vegan taxidermy’, created by mother-daughter duo Maria Varela and Claudia Alvarez at Chulita Design. The two have worked in partnership with natural history museums in Argentina and Spain. Their pieces are made of resin, with upholstery fabric and no animal remains, yet maintain a incredible understanding of animal anatomy. Each piece is a unique and characterful piece of art. You can find their work at their website or for sale in our shop. We’ve included a short interview with Claudia and Maria below.

How did you decide to settle on an ‘harlequin’ aesthetic?

Claudia: The idea comes from our love and passion for nature and wildlife. My mother and I grew up in families where the wildlife, theatre and art were always very present.We try to show the wildlife from our human perspective by preserving the details of the animals and twisting them into something more theatrical and fun.

What are your favourite animals to design and why?

In the 80’s we lived in South Africa for a short period of time. Ever since we’ve been in love with all the antelopes!

Taxidermy is old-fashioned and associated with people who hunt for pleasure. What was your goal with making vegan taxidermy with such a playful look?

Metamorphosis means transformation, the transformation that animals experiment in their biological development. Our goal is to create a metamorphosis in people’s mindsets, and bring wildlife to their lives and homes without hurting any animals. We have managed to maintain all the morphology of real animals, but with a playful and theatrical aesthetic.

This weekend marks thirty years of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Here at Milagros, we’d like to take this opportunity to express our virulent disgust at Trump’s wall along the U.S. Mexico border. We believe an open world is a healthy one, and are well aware of the desperation that causes people to make the perilous journey to the United States, uprooting themselves from their communities and often leaving loved ones behind. One of our foremost aims as a business is to work with artists and craftspeople so as to help them make a living, so that they do not feel pushed to make this daunting decision. Mexico holds a dear place in our hearts, and we want to bring people its aesthetics and traditions. We’re always happy to answer your questions about where something is made and who by.

And in the meantime, we hope that this weekend you raise a glass to civil resistance against harmful regimes. May you help one another to live with dignity, and may the spirit that brought the Wall down live on. Salud!

We would love to see you there other than you are.

Milagros is delighted to announce that its Day of the Dead festival returns this year for its third edition. Please join us on Saturday 12pm, November 2nd, for a day of celebration. You can expect a female mariachi band, a Day of the Dead beauty parlour, delicious Mexican food, best dressed skeleton dog competition and Frida Kahlo head dress workshop – all with loads of colour, spice, and all things nice. We’ll be filling the street with flowers and there will even be a procession! Children and furry friends are, of course, guests of honour. Further details of the event can be followed on our Facebook page – or why not stop by and have a chat in person? Either way, we hope to see you there. Salud!

About the Day of the Dead

Maybe you’re someone who first became aware of the Day of the Dead because you watched James Bond strolling through Mexico City in the opening of Spectre; or maybe you’re small and you watched the movie Coco (or maybe you’re the parent of a small person who watched the movie Coco) – either way, awareness of this festival has been increasing in the UK in recent years.

Much of Mexican culture dramatizes the collision of pre- with post-Hispanic traditions, and the Day of the Dead is a great example. It springs from an indigenous attitude to life and death, which has since been combined with what many other Christians around the world would know as All Souls’ Day, November 1st (the day after Halloween). While many people are initially struck by the preponderance of skeletons in Mexican folk art and imagery, but this is actually all part of a very different, and much more positive, attitude to death. The Day of the Dead is an opportunity to remember departed loved ones, and to celebrate their lives among others who loved them. With much colour and dancing, death is made a part of life and the well-lived life is a cause for celebration. We hope to have the pleasure of your company.

If you’ve spent any time in the United States, you’ll have noticed that tequila is a much more ubiquitous drink on the other side of the pond. Sadly, we in the UK have not, until very recently, been able to partake to anywhere near the same extent, and have remained largely in the dark. Thankfully, we’re starting to catch up, and the past decade has seen a rise in tequila and its lesser-known relative, mezcal, making the journey over. If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is but were too embarrassed to ask, then Milagros has teamed up with Sin Gusano to help elucidate you! And if you’re a seasoned connoisseur, then this is an opportunity to come and sample some of the mezcals on offer.

Tequila, though more famous by virtue of its role in margaritas, is actually a subcategory of mezcal. Mezcal is made from the cooked heart, or piña, of an agave plant (pictured above). You may recognise them – they’re always a mainstay of botanic gardens. In Mexico, mezcal is traditionally served neat, with orange slices or spices on the side as an accompaniment. It’s strong, with a clean, fiery taste.

Jon Darby founded Sin Gusano, an itinerant pop-up mezcaleria, as a labour of love, to bring mezcal further afield. Jon travels throughout Mexico, to small and sometimes tiny distilleries to find mezcals which reflect the diversity and wilderness of their terroir. Many of them have never before been imported to the UK.

To celebrate Milagros’s collaboration with La Muerte Tiene Permiso (see our last newsletter) for Shoreditch Design Week, Milagros will be hosting Sin Gusano next Thursday, September 19th, between 6 and 9pm, for an evening of mezcal and beers. There will be a free mezcal for each guest halfway through the evening, when Jon will give a brief talk about the drink and Sin Gusano’s work. Join us to share Mexico’s contemporary artisanal heritage in design and drinks and view the La Muerte Tiene Permiso collection with founder Omar Ortiz Franco. We hope to see you there – salud!

Sin Gusano’s educational mezcal box sets will also be available to purchase from Milagros for the duration of Shoreditch Design Triangle (14th – 22nd September). There are two boxes to choose from: The Regional Variety and Agave Variety. Each set contains three 150ml bottles of rare agave spirits, three traditional mezcal drinking glasses from Oaxaca, and three placemats, which conveniently are also tasting notes. The regional set consists of  distillates from the Espadín agave, showcasing the terroir of different regions. The agave set contains distillates from rare and wild agave species from the Oaxaca valley, showcasing differing plant characteristics. The boxes are fully recyclable, built to order in London, and sealed with paper hand-made by artisans in Oaxaca from the fibres of the magical agave plant.

For this year’s Shoreditch Design Triangle, Milagros is delighted to feature Mexican designer and architect Omar Ortiz Franco, in the UK debut of his venture La Muerte Tiene Permiso.

Based between Europe and Mexico, the brand’s unusual name, which translates as ‘death has permission’, reflects Franco’s belief that though death comes for us all, if we can spend a life time imparting meaning and memory to the objects that surround us, it will not have been in vain. The phrase is also the title of a well-renowned short story by 20th century Mexican writer Edmundo Valadés, wherein a group of campesinos (farmers) band together to get revenge on an unfair mayor. It’s a much-cherished tale of social justice and worker solidarity – fitting for a brand that champions the work of small-scale artisans and bringing them to a discerning European clientele for a fair price.

Indeed, La Muerte Tiene Permiso has a curated range of homewares made by skilled craftspeople working in traditional techniques. Much like Tom Bloom of Milagros, Franco travels the country, building relationships with small family-run workshops and individual artisans, with particular emphasis on the areas around Oaxaca and Tonala, Jalisco. These tend to be small studios working with local materials such as clay and volcanic stone, and who prioritise environmental concerns such as water usage. The end products, informed by Franco’s twenty-first century design vision, are minimalist, geometric designs; often using single colours in matte finishes, and relying on simple curves or geometric shapes. There is handblown recycled glassware and a great variety of ceramics. Particularly noteworthy are La Muerte’s black pottery, which riffs on its lineage as a distinctly Mexican craft, but makes for eminently contemporary ceramics.

Shoreditch Design Triangle is an annual celebration of creativity and design in Shoreditch, serving as an opportunity for local businesses and institutions to showcase exciting new developments in a mutually supportive and collaborative environment. Now in its eleventh year, the Design Triangle will be running from September 14th to September 22nd. Keep an eye out for Milagros friends Mama Shelter as well – they’re new to the neighbourhood! Details of Milagros’s opening times for the duration can be found below or on the Shoreditch Design Triangle website:

14th September 201911:00 am – 7:00 pm

15th September 201911:00 am – 7:00 pm

16th September 201911:00 am – 7:00 pm

17th September 201911:00 am – 7:00 pm

18th September 201911:00 am – 7:00 pm

19th September 201911:00 am – 7:00 pm

21st September 201911:00 am – 7:00 pm

22nd September 201911:00 am – 7:00 pm