ARKET barrow boy, shirt designer, coal miner, engineer, flamenco dancer, sculptor, artisttilemaker, draughtsman: I thought that I knew—or knew of—all the most colourful characters around the area where I lived for 26 years, but how could I have missed Ron Hitchins (1926–2019)? The son of a deported Chinese opium dealer and a Lithuanian immigrant, Hitchins was born in Limehouse and lived for most of his life in Hackney, where he turned all these experiences, and his house, into works of art. He was eager to explore the possibilities of different materials and the ‘abstract-Aztec’ tiles with which he covered every surface, from walls
