Inside east London homes: the East End's coolest and most creative interior design showcased in new book

Architects and florists, photographers, designers and shop owners are among those who crowd the weighty new hardback East London Homes (Hoxton Mini Press, £30).

Its author Sarah Bagner, of Hackney, loves “homes with stuff” — and this was her starting point. “I’m not talking about clutter, but carefully acquired possessions,” she says.

Her own home is a bright, modern flat overlooking a row of railway arches, shared with her three-year-old son, Ted, and her Swedish husband, Thomas Major, who works in marketing for Ikea.

Bagner’s parents are Swedish but she was born and brought up in London and studied graphic design at the University of Brighton. The family will shortly move to a new home in Clapton.

Her 2012 book, titled Supermarket Sarah’s Wonder Walls: A guide to displaying your stuff, was published in three languages.

The “Supermarket Sarah” tag came from the pioneering blog/web shop she set up in 2009, with “click and buy” modern design and vintage finds, often from her Portobello market stall.

Bagner was an influencer before Instagram ever went live in 2010.

She designed “walls” for Selfridges, Topshop, Monki and John Lewis and kept the quirky name for her art direction/styling business and website.

“Stuff makes places individual. Looking round east London, there is a marvellous mix of Victorian terraces, warehouses, semis, architect-designed one-offs, and more. Of course I needed to include more minimal interiors. After all, there are so many beautiful ways people can live. I aimed to be inspiring and accessible.”

The transformed spaces she found included a hummus factory, a cheese fridge, a coffin workshop, a gin distillery and a rotten old garage.

Locating the subjects became obsessive and often enjoyable, as when a woman in Spitalfields opened champagne and asked the neighbours in.

Bagner slowly assembled 29 homes within a generous eastern circle, with outer edges of Spitalfields, Hoxton, Stoke Newington, Upper Clapton, Leytonstone, Forest Gate, Upton, Canning Town and Whitechapel.

Within this perimeter, roughly west to east, nestle Shoreditch, Haggerston, Hackney, Homerton, Mile End, Poplar and West Ham.

An introduction to the new book by arts supremo Charles Saumarez Smith is quite a coup.

The restored Georgian home in Stepney where he and his wife Romilly, a jeweller, is featured. The couple, who met when they were 19, have lived in the East End for nearly 40 years.

East Londoners are inveterate entrepreneurs, making Clare Lattin a good opener. She modelled her restaurant Little Duck on her own home in a tucked-away mews in Dalston.

Italian architect Chantal Martinelli runs the gloriously anarchic Mad Atelier store in Clapton, with her French Algerian husband Julien.

Famously black is the home of interiors maven Abigail Ahern, while resolutely red — even floors and radiator — is the home/gallery/workshop of the elderly eccentric artist Sue Kreitzman.

Minimalism is the mantra for architects Sara L’Espérance and Michael Putman who stow all their stuff behind uniform streamlined cupboards.

“This area is all about change, it’s so exciting,” adds Bagner’s sister, the writer and editor Alex Bagner, also featured.

Yet there’s a village feel for many: “I feel like a Claptoner, not a Londoner,” says florist Florence Kennedy, living in a former dairy, “anchored” by her business, child and dog.

But above all it’s the collectors that shine. Hats, jackets and shoes are strung aloft in the cavernous, Dalston home-cum-workshop of set designer Tony Hornecker.

Ceramics, plastic fruit and a kitschy cushion pile-up belong to vintage interiors store owner Kentaro Poteliakhoff.

In Mile End, ceramicist Molly Micklethwait and silversmith Rufus White collect “according to theme, material, texture and colour”.

Bagner elicited the details, while photographer Jon Aaron Green recorded the nuances of natural light, or night-time gloom, adding nicely natural portraits.

The author’s eye is ever sharp: here a loo cistern with a smiley face; there a top shelf with a prop plastic severed head in the home of a man who makes zombie films.

Interior designer Michelle Kelly’s minty-fresh style in London Fields is “William Morris meets Miu Miu”.

So did Bagner have a favourite? Not really.

“These homes were so genuine and convincing. Each home is in tandem with a life — and that’s why I chose it.”

So what is “home” for her? “It’s absolutely where the heart is. It’s what you do, you don’t follow fashion. The home is what makes people happy.”

Now she has taken a step on into interior design.

“I try to bring out what people really want, a bit like a therapist, teasing out their ideas. My style is about comfort and good sense.” And stuff, of course.​​