The secret recipe of London's iconic Blue Plaques
- Text by HUCK HQ
- Photography by Film directed by Cat McShane
Jimi Hendrix has one. Virginia Woolf has one. So does Karl Marx.
Blue Plaques appear on buildings across London marking where famous figures lived, worked or had significant moments. The programme dates back to the 19th Century and is run by English Heritage. Since 1984 all the plaques have been hand made by just one family.
In our latest short film, Huck heads down to Cornwall, South West England to track down the family and learn about their secret recipe (which took years to refine) and the hours of painstaking craftsmanship that go into each ceramic Blue Plaque.
At the Ashworth family workshop outside Lostwithiel, we discover the pleasures and pitfalls of working under the same roof as your nearest and dearest. But with father Frank in his eighties and following a triple heart bypass, he and wife Sue are hoping their son Justin will take over the family business to ensure the skills aren’t lost.
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