About Double Helpings

Double helpings with Gilbert + George for The Canvas Cafe 

A wonderful plate for you, an essential plateful for many others

This plate is wonderful for many reasons. Firstly, as a plate’s primary function is to serve food, and as food is both life-giving and life-affirming, plates, by their very nature are wonderful. 

Secondly and most importantly, this particular plate has been created by our neighbours, the artists Gilbert & George to support our work at The Canvas Cafe, a social enterprise in East London that feeds the homeless and children at risk of holiday hunger. All of which means that buying this plate provides around 14 platefuls of food for some of the most vulnerable people in Tower Hamlets.

It is worth noting that this screen-printed fine china plate was manufactured and hand-finished in the traditional pottery heartland of Stoke-on-Trent at Duchess China, Est.1884, to the highest quality. The plate is an extraordinary combination of multiple works taken from Gilbert and George’s most recent show, re-imagined here in full vibrant colour. So by all means hang it up and admire it. But if you want to eat off of it, then please do that too; this plate performs many functions and all of them, we do hope you now agree, truly are wonderful.