Freya Purcell

Freya Purcell is a design historian who focuses on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Her work frequently examines everyday life and urban living, a fact which has been reflected in her research during her MA at the V&A/RCA, which has covered a broad range of subjects from Victorian Police Rattles to Irish Furniture. Her interest in design history stemmed originally from seeking to investigate histories of those less represented in textual sources. To do this Freya looks to employ a multidisciplinary approach weaving Design Histories with those of Sensory Experience, Emotion, Medicine or more; something she wishes to continue in her future research. What this future research will be is still to be decided, though the topic of ephemerality and memory is something she would like to explore further in some way. Whichever road her research leads her, she hopes to be a historian who reflects whose work is accessible and reflective of broader audiences.

Having previously worked at Leighton House Museum, Freya is keen to develop as a public historian; widening knowledge and interest in history and deconstructing popular myths. In response to the pandemic and events of 2020 she and two of her classmates, Genevieve Drinkwater and Tomas Brown founded the Word On The Street Archive; the UK’s first mapped archive collecting crowd-sourced photography created in the wake of COVID-19. She can currently be found squirrelled away as a cataloguer in an antique bookshop.

Image - Detail of Anonymous, Five Criers On a Single Sheet, c1780-1790, Woodcut, London Metropolitan Archives, p7513470.

The Ephemeral Saloop Stall: Examining the Stall, the Seller and Space in Georgian London, 1700-1820

This work is the first critical engagement with saloop as a drink in the long eighteenth century, here considered to be 1700-1820s. It presents an examination of the drink itself and offers an exploration of the designed space and materiality of the saloop stall in London. Saloop’s importance lies in how it deviates from the norm. Although introduced in a similar way to other exotic drinks, saloop has a unique "life-cycle" flourishing on London streets in the late Georgian era, where it was consumed by the labouring-class, but then fading into obscurity by the mid- nineteenth-century.

This dissertation takes a microhistorical approach; setting saloop and the saloop stall as its focus. For the first time in eighteenth-century studies, it examines saloop the drink and the material components of the saloop stall, seller, consumer, and space. Hopefully adding to broader discussions of the eighteenth-century, for example labouring-class engagement with new consuming cultures, the construction of space and ideas of exoticism will be considered. This dissertation uses a history of design methodology rooted in material culture to examine the drink, the stall, and its objects. These are analysed through a wide range of sources such as: contemporary literature, visual culture, court testimony and remaining object evidence.

Through these, this dissertation seeks to explore the saloop stall, the material culture and the people that constructed these spaces within the long eighteenth-century. With two main research questions at its core: how did saloop fit within London life, why did it lose its cultural capital? This research is in three chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the drink saloop as it has not yet been critically researched. Chapter 2 explores the conceptual and physical space of the stall, examining its position in the street and the audience and vendors who interacted with it. Chapter 3 explores the materiality of the stall, framing the objects within broader discussions of material culture in the eighteenth-century.

Launch Project

Saloop from Thomas Rowlandson — Rowlandson’s Characteristic Sketches of the Lower Orders, Intended as a Companion to the New Picture of London: Consisting of Fifty-Four Plates ... Coloured. (London, 1820).

Launch Project

Bowl, 1726-1750 — An example of the bowls that would have been used to serve Saloop on these ephemeral stalls. Earthenware, Museum of London, London, 21383.

Pictured above is an image of Saloop Stall from Rowlandson’s Characteristic Sketches of the Lower Orders. Throughout London these stalls were set up on streets and alleys. Places chosen with care and consideration and placed near specific sites, such as markets or theatres. Operating for a few hours at a time before packing up.

Through the streets these stalls were erected always with three main consistent elements: A table, a tea-urn and ceramic bowls. They were simple spaces as shown above, but through this material culture the saloop stall carved out a space with the city. Both a part of and apart from the street. The warmth embers of the tea urn would heat the space providing respite on a cold morning, at times that many attendees might be dressed in ragged clothes or barefoot. Ceramic bowls such as those in the Museum of London’s collection would be provided by the seller, binding customers to the space till they finished their drink (these were no cardboard cups to-go).

Through these material elements the stall carved out a space on the street, where for the few hours it operated the labouring poor could grasp some respite as heat (and maybe even fellowship) emanated from the stall.

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Examples of material culture examined in written thesis

Freya Purcell

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Royal College of Art