Jack - SPIT
Jack is an artist and a frequent second-hand shopper, shopping at SPIT a few times a month. He told me that he loves to go to places where he can discover new things. In his words so that he can “have a good opinion of how different kinds of people in different kinds of surroundings live and think and so I can understand them better. It-s good for my art and also for my teaching that I can have a wide selection, that I not only can be this very elite, sometimes narrow-minded art world.” Jack was also at SPIT on the big annual day so he had already bought a lot of things that day. When asked about his purchases he responded: “Well, I-ve been twice here today. I-ve bought some lovely books. One, a very old Larousse book, a French encyclopedia. I was surprised that the drawings in the book are very pretty so I bought that and I bought another very big book, which the pages are mostly empty and I-m going to use it as a sketchbook…I also bought a nice couch, which was very original. And I just bought some old coffee cans and some mirror doors. Because I also like to come in here and look… sometimes you can use things for different purposes and that-s what many artists have been doing in the past 100 years and it-s a little bit the same here so I-m trying to discover the quality of some things and then I-m trying to use it in the way it should be used and in other ways.
I asked Jack, as an artist how he defines quality, and he told me that it was “mainly the material. If you take a look at this silver coffee pot…I don-t know much about silver but this is a very simple design and it reminds me very much of the Art Nouveau because the shape of the handle and you can see how it-s finished off and you don-t see any scrapes and you also see its brand on the bottom. I think it-s good quality and for this price (15 euros) I can-t say no. Continuing the discussion of quality and 2nd hand items, I asked him if he felt there was a difference in shopping 2nd hand compared to newer stores. “Yeah, but I love also designer things and I can-t afford them. I like beautiful things but then if I want to buy them in a store, in new shops, you-re talking an immense amount of money for a lamp, or something, it could easily cost 500 euros or something because of the design quality. Like the couch seat I just bought, Maybe if you want to buy something with that quality and that design new, I think it-s easily in a class of 1000 euro or even more and here I bought it for 60 euros. So that-s a difference. And I think if you keep your eyes open and you have to have some experience in quality, you have to recognize the quality from the rubbish. But if you have that then you can do brilliant things with it. In addition to price and quality, Jack also told me that he likes the social aspect of a store like SPIT. “It makes life possible for many other people to live with quality things and pretty things in a very reasonable cheap way.” I got some great 2nd hand shopping tips from Jack that day!