Dulwich Festival May 2025 – art and open studios, ghostsigns and more

This time last week I was wandering around East Dulwich in the sunshine. The Dulwich Festival covers a ridiculously large area from Denmark Hill in the North to the edges of Crystal Palace in the South – and it's impossible to see it all...!

It's a logistics nightmar, but well worth it – you have plan your visits across both weekends, taking careful consideration to work out which houses/studios were open on which days. Last year I discovered some amazing artists such as Jess Blandford and Octavia Millar, to name just two. 

Art Deco in Peckham High Street and an an old Express Dairies outlet in the backstreets of East Dulwich

This year I only had half a day. I arrived at Peckham Rye station at about 1.30pm and started getting destracted by the buildings around me. Stop Jane. Focus!  Managing to walk past a second hand book store and other tempting delights in Bellenden Rd, I headed first to Caroline Bowder-Ridger's house where I found that her paintings and collages aren't the only fab things in her beautiful home. 

From there, I headed to the local fair on Goose Green – more distractions! Lots of great stalls and sideshows, then southwards along Lordship Lane, checking on old shop fronts that I already know about and a John Eddowes coal hole cover (I wonder, was he related to Catherine?) and stupidly wasting more valuable viewing time by popping into a few tempting shops along the way, all of which are open any ol' day. 

Then left into North Cross Road, where there hints of bygone shops are evident in the architecture and signage as per a half a painted sign (for Dartmouth, Cheesemonger?) and a bakery at the corner where HOVIS can be seen peeking through the paint set on a diagonal within a bricked-in window: 

I then visited Jess where Jane Hughes, another talented lady, was also exhibiting, and finished my journey by dropping in on Mia Cavaliero, an old friend I haven't seen in decades – over beer and olives we reminisced about a painting holiday we both enjoyed in Dolceaqua 1993.

A really lovely day.