Art of gold
Tucked away in London's East End is a pub boasting a very unusual clientèle. Adam Edwards meets their host
The life-size heart hanging like a neon Budweiser sign in the saloon-bar window of the Golden Heart is pink. It is embellished with the word "Esquilant" and the figure 25 is at its centre.
This incongruous objet d'art that brightens the ordinary Edwardian façade of the apparently unremarkable red-brick corner pub in London's East End is the first clue that the Golden Heart is far from being a traditional venue full of lovable cockneys drinking port and lemon and doing the Lambeth Walk.
The second clue is a glimpse of Gilbert and George enjoying pints of Adnams Broadside at the bar.
The conceptual artists, who describe themselves as "living sculptures" and dress identically in suits, are locals. So, too, is the creator of the notorious My Bed sculpture, provocative artist Tracey Emin.
Brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman, creators of the controversial exhibition Like a Dog Returns to its Vomit, often drop in for a sharpener. Sam Taylor-Wood, famous for her David (2004) video portrait of a sleeping David Beckham and Sarah Lucas, creator of a nude sculpture constructed from a table and entitled Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab, both love a glass or three of Chardonnay at the Heart.
Michael Landy, who famously destroyed all his possessions in the window of a high-street department store in a performance/installation project called Breakdown 2001, is unlikely to refuse a swift one. Nor, of course, are model Kate Moss and her on-off partner, singer Pete Doherty.
Mother-figure
The Golden Heart is so cutting-edge that it would make the blade of a hand-made
sushi knife seem dull by comparison.
"What the Ivy is to showbiz stars, the Golden Heart is to artists," claimed one national newspaper recently, going on to describe the idiosyncratic pub as a favourite haunt of most of the important younger artists in Britain.
And the mistress of this motley crew of beer-drinking Brit artists and its bohemian following is Sandra Esquilant, a hula-hooping London landlady, 60 this year and included by Art Review magazine among the 100 most influential people in the contemporary art world.
Her locals treat her like a mum. Tracey Emin describes her as "a best friend" and celebrity restaurateur Fergus Henderson calls her "a force of nature".
"What are you drinking?" asks Sandra as I step through the well-crafted wooden doors of the old Truman's boozer in Commercial Street at 11am on a Friday morning.
"It's a bit early for me," I say, but my protests prove fruitless.
"Nonsense," she says as she pours me a half of Adnams. "They're a lovely, lovely company, Adnams," she tells me. "They are old-school - people should learn from the example they set. They have such good manners."
Off the record
There's no stopping Sandra once she starts. Listening is akin to switching on the classic Wurlitzer jukebox in the corner of the scrubbed bar - she rattles off stories, anecdotes and views like a well-chosen selection of vinyl singles.
"We're still debating whether to light up the huge Truman sign on top of the building," she says. Sandra's still talking when she emerges from behind the bar that is dominated by a poster of a crucified Wayne Rooney depicted on the cross of St George and sits down at one of the small marble-topped bar tables. She is as charming and quick-witted as any cockney sparrow.
"I love my pub," she says. "I wake up every single day feeling happy that I do what I do. I don't take holidays or days off. This is my life, and I'll never retire."
Sandra, the daughter of a London docker, dreamed of working in the City until she met and married Dennis Esquilant, a Truman Black Eagle Brewery worker who hoped to run a pub one day.
When the couple were eventually offered the tenancy of the brewery's own brew pub, which had an early 6am licence for its workers in those days, the couple jumped at the opportunity.
It proved an immediate success until the late 1980s when the brewery closed at the same time as the pub's other source of income, Spitalfields Market, sited directly opposite.
However, instead of cutting their losses and leaving, Dennis returned to his previous work as a London cabbie while Sandra struggled on, trying desperately to manage the pub alone.
And then Gilbert and George, who had bought an old Georgian house nearby, walked through the door.
"They changed everything," says Sandra, a handsome, well-dressed woman who smokes 70 cigarettes a day.
"Gilbert and George were fantastic - they brought in so many different people. A lot of them were artists who were living around here because the property was still relatively cheap.
"Then they began to ask me to attend their exhibitions, which I loved. At those events I met other artists who also became regulars."
The brewery redeveloped next door now houses more than 200 small creative businesses run by artists, fashion designers, architects and recording and photographic studios.
Spitalfields Market was also re-invented as the centre of a flourishing creative community, with a wide variety of stalls selling art, design, interiors and food.
State of the art
By the turn of the century Sandra was running a thriving business, catering for the most artistic collection of locals in Britain. "They're lovely," she says. "They're generous and kind and they feel safe here."
The Golden Heart's dedicated landlady has become an expert on the more avant-garde type of art that drives saloon-bar customers who know what they like - such as Jack Vettriano's The Singing Butler - into a frenzy of rage and has turned into a collector herself.
But her collection is not housed in the pub, which she has stripped back to its Edwardian simplicity and decorated with black and white photographs of her regulars.
The only other adornment, apart from wonderful fresh flowers - a reminder of Sandra's florist mother - is a striking installation presented last year to celebrate her quarter-century as the Golden Heart's landlady - a pink neon heart designed, built and hung in the frosted window by the iconic Tracey Emin.
