Spitalfields artist Robson keeps his bottle creating beertop pictures

Regulars in the pubs around Spitalfields may have noticed a man coming in to collect bottletops from behind the bar and then leave again, clutching a fat plastic bag full of them.

He is a Brazilian artist Robson Cezar who has a passion for hoarding thousands of beer bottletops which he needs to create works of art with.

Now the bottletop pictures have been put on show on the ‘Spitalfields Life’ website this week by the mysterious ‘Gentle Author’ who discovered the artist on his rounds.

Robson cycles each day from his home in Spitalfields down to his studio at Tower Bridge, his ‘bottletop counting house’ where he spends endless hours sorting them lovingly into colours and designs to organise his finds as the raw material for his art.

It all started two years ago when he asked Sandra Esqulant at The Golden Heart in Commercial Street to collect a few for him.

She gathered them conscientiously. Now he does the nightly rounds of most boozers in the area—well, any excuse—to collect the endless harvest of bottletops. In return, he makes pictures for the pubs.

He first made a golden heart in bottletops as a personal gift for Sandra.

But he seized the opportunity to do something more ambitious when The Bell in Middlesex Street offered him the chance to cover the exterior of the pub with bottletops—it took 6,000!

His latest picture has been installed at the Carpenters’ Arms in Cheshire Street, off Brick Lane, this one hung up on the roof beam in the bar where landlords Eric and Nigel have been collecting tops for him for a year.

Robson’s art can be seen on www.spitalfieldslife.com