Maison Bertaux — Art Above the Pastries

Maison Bertaux on Greek Street in London is a historic French pâtisserie established in 1871 by a fleeing Paris Communard, featuring an upper-floor art gallery that hosted Noel Fielding's first exhibition. Founded after the Paris Commune was crushed in May 1871, the Soho shop retains mirrors inscribed with Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. The venue hosted Alexander McQueen's 25th birthday party and features a navy facade designed by artist Howard Hodgkin.

London · from the walk “Canvas & Cobblestones” · audio ~4 min · Generated

28 Greek Street, London W1D 5DD

Who founded the Maison Bertaux pâtisserie on Greek Street in London in 1871?

Look at this little blue shopfront beside you on Greek Street. It might be the most Unlikely art gallery in all of London... and it started with a man running for his life.......... In eighteen seventy-one, Monsieur Bertaux, a Communard fleeing from Paris, arrived with an armful of recipes and opened this tiny pâtisserie and tea room in Greek Street. Now, think about what that means. The Paris Commune was a revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on the eighteenth of March, eighteen seventy-one. The French Army crushed it during the "Bloody Week" beginning on the twenty-first of May... and either killed in battle or executed an estimated ten to fifteen Thousand Communards. Around three thousand five hundred refugees, including fifteen hundred Communards and their families, arrived in Britain in the early eighteen seventies. Monsieur Bertaux was one of them. He didn't just bring pastry recipes across the Channel... he carried the ideals of a revolution.......... And if you look carefully at the gilded mirrors inside... three of them still bear the inscriptions Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. The motto of the Commune, hiding in plain sight above the éclairs.......... It was no accident the shop opened here, for this was the heart of the French community in London in the late nineteenth century. The historic French Protestant church sits in nearby Soho Square, while the Catholic Notre Dame de France stands in Leicester Place.......... Now, the art. The shop is situated near the former location of Central Saint Martins art school, and has an art gallery on its upper floor, run by Tania Wade. This is no ordinary gallery above a cake shop. It was Here that Noel Fielding held his very first art exhibition, and in years since the space has featured artists such as Timothy Spall, Sigur Rós, Diva Zappa, Harry Hill, and more. Fielding's works sold like hot cakes — from fifty-pound signed posters to the most expensive pieces at seven thousand pounds.......... Countless people have passed through that blue door, from Soho fixture Jeffrey Bernard to Alexander Mcqueen, who used to visit as a Central Saint Martins student. The pâtisserie even hosted Mcqueen's twenty-fifth birthday party. And that distinctive deep navy blue framing the shopfront? That came from the painter Howard Hodgkin, who instructed the owners to "frame the front, the pastries, the life inside in deepest navy blue."

...... Co-owner Michele Wade started here as a Saturday Girl in the nineteen seventies and, after a spell at Rada, briefly ran the shop from a bedsit in Manchester while appearing on stage in The Seagull. Can you imagine... managing a Soho pâtisserie by telephone while performing Chekhov up north?......... Over a hundred and fifty years, through two World Wars, through Soho's red-light days, through lockdown... they were Never closed. There's even a photograph from nineteen forty-five of the shop boarded with sandbags, while Anna the waitress with her two red-ribboned plaits hid under the domed silver steamer as bombs fell.......... This is a place where revolution, pastry, and art have been tangled together since the very beginning. Step inside if you can... and look UP.

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