As you might expect, Sir Terry Leahy's remarks about supermarket shopping being 'progress', didn't go down too well in this household. 'Progress' is dodgy word. It's always used by politicians and businessmen to present some kind of change that will benefit them but not us, as both wonderful and inevitable.
Let's look at the experience of supermarket shopping: you go through the doors into a brightly lit non-place with no individuality and glide about with your trolley in what I call a 'shopping trance'. I suspect if brain scanning techniques could be applied to shoppers as they go round you'd find that areas of the cerebral cortex to do with personality, and rational thinking are subdued or inoperable. I notice that if you meet close friends in the virtual reality of the supermarket, you rarely have a meaningful human contact with them. Usually you exchange tepid 'Hi's', talk a bit about the awfulness of the weather or the virus you've just had and then drift off to check the prices on Whiskas or beef/horse/mystery animal burgers. It's not living; it's the afterlife. Has anybody been able to write anything interesting about - you can't really call it 'the experience'- the 'non experience' of the supermarket?
Two of my favourite poems are set on market days: 'Miss Thompson goes Shopping' by Martin Armstrong [ my favourite as a kid -Google it!] and Tam O'Shanter by Rabbie Burns. It's hard to imagine a visit to Tesco's prompting such delightful poetry.
Personally I find myself recalling my summer in Norfolk in 1977 when I 'did the gaffs' with my friend Michael Rockerfeller [sic]. We sold gemstone and silver jewellery on a weekly circuit of markets. The 'Crown Jewell' of this circuit was Swaffham Market on a Saturday. It was like a huge party. People bussed in from outlying villages and hamlets, the pubs were open all day long, a noisy auction would be taking place, local shops would be bustling. If you stopped and listened there was a tremendous hubbub of conversation, shouting and laughter. You could observe people exchanging greetings and banter, gathering in convivial knots and then moving on. The stalls were very diverse, and this I think is crucial, you could not predict what you would find next as you walked round. At that time there were all sorts of people from different backgrounds, such as myself and Mike, having a go at running a market stall. There was a sense of optimism and adventure in the air that is hard to imagine now. I think that is an objective fact, I don't think I'm looking back with rose tinted specs. The experience of that Saturday market was rich and juicy and life enhancing. It made you feel ALIVE.
Now consider this. In your life you have visited a supermarket on thousands of occasions. Can you recall on of those? Do you draw a blank? I know I do! So is supermarket shopping, from a human perspective, the perspective of the quality of personal experience, progress?
By the way markets, the ones that have not been destroyed by 'progress', are still cheaper for most goods than, supermarkets. Every Thursday I spend about a tenner on fruit and veg on Loughborough Market and struggle to carry all the bags I end up with. My fruit and veg bill is probably a third or a quarter of what it would be if I shopped for the same produce in Tesco's.
One of the problems for markets is parking. Often car parks are too far away from stalls, or just too expensive. More on that issue another day.
Phil.
Monday, 4 February 2013
Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Late at Tate, 7th December
We will be selling at Tate Britain on Friday Evening, 7th December. Please come along if you are in London. The event is called 'Late at Tate'.
There will be another nine craft workers, all selling top quality craft items.
Sharon has also contributed a blog entry on the Kelmscott Chaucer, 16th November 'Makers on Makers'. See below...sorry couldn't find a way to get a live link to the blog set up...sorry...
[ technophobic] Phil
http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/blogs/makers-on-makers-sharon-dickinson-archives-crafts-on-kelmscott-chaucer
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
The difficulties of photographing mirrors.
This is one of our new Surrealist inspired mirrors. 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe'. And that's not a camera.
Tuesday, 6 November 2012
Avoid Talktalk !
Please note that our E mail address will be changing very soon so that the address on our business cards will no longer be valid. We will post our new address ASAP.
Our service has been through Talktalk. We have just spent the best part of a day trying to get answers from Talktalk to simple questions about why they are overcharging us for a service that is not working properly and our contract with them.
Every time we have phoned we have visited a different country: South Africa, Thailand, India, even the UK. The responses we have had to our questions have been, in general, incomprehensible and misleading. It was impossible to reach someone who could talk normally. Their staff must be trained to obfuscate, fobb off and ignore customers. All Talktalk want is your money. Our contract with them, which we can't obtain, involves a penalty for our premature termination of it. But we are quite prepared to pay this to get away from them. No doubt we could contest issues to do with the contract but we just can't afford to waste any more time on this subject.
So be warned: avoid Talktalk.
Our service has been through Talktalk. We have just spent the best part of a day trying to get answers from Talktalk to simple questions about why they are overcharging us for a service that is not working properly and our contract with them.
Every time we have phoned we have visited a different country: South Africa, Thailand, India, even the UK. The responses we have had to our questions have been, in general, incomprehensible and misleading. It was impossible to reach someone who could talk normally. Their staff must be trained to obfuscate, fobb off and ignore customers. All Talktalk want is your money. Our contract with them, which we can't obtain, involves a penalty for our premature termination of it. But we are quite prepared to pay this to get away from them. No doubt we could contest issues to do with the contract but we just can't afford to waste any more time on this subject.
So be warned: avoid Talktalk.
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
Does the National Trust support British Crafts?
A while ago I sent off an Email to the National Trust asking them what their policy was on stocking their shops. I wanted to know how much of what they sold was imported and mass produced and whether they actively supported British crafts. I didn't receive a reply.
My question was prompted by our visits to National Trust properties. At the end of your tour you are often funneled into 'The Gift Shop'. Sharon and I have never bought anything in these shops first of all because the prices are too high and, secondly, because much of their contents appears to be imported and mass produced. There does not appear to be much that is locally produced or of a genuinely craft origin. It's shiny, packaged and bears all the hallmarks of slick marketing strategies and all that nasty 'business' approach where the only thing that matters is the bottom line.
The properties owned by the National Trust were built by skilled stonemasons, carpenters and bricklayers. They were filled with and adorned with beautiful furniture, sculpture, porcelain, fabrics and so on. These items had to be made. They required high levels of skill to be produced. Everything you see in a National Trust property was produced by an individual's hard work and mastery of their craft.
The National Trust spends a great deal of money on preserving the buildings that it owns and the objects they hold. However, does it support the crafts tradition that made these things and encourage it to flourish and grow?
The National Trust Gift Shop 'Experience' is not encouraging. I suspect that the mindset of those that control National Trust retailing is formed by the same 'marketing' ethos that has reduced shopping in England to such a dull, dehumanised level. I suspect that few of them have a ever worked for themselves or made anything with their own hands.
What would we like to see? We would like to see the National Trust actually sell and promote the work of British craft workers.They are part of the tradition that produced the stuff that the National Trust looks after. This tradition needs to be nurtured by the Trust.
It would be nice if the National Trust shops sold a little less twee confectionery and overpriced bead jewellery and more locally made quality crafts.
The biggest problem those of us who are full time craft workers face is the cost of selling what we make. Most of us could never afford to rent a shop, good craft fairs are expensive because hobbyists, who have other sources of income, inflate demand for stalls, with on line selling it's hard to get noticed, and traditional markets [where we sell] are in decline. However good what we make is we have to spend an inordinate amount of time and money trying to find our way to our customers.They, equally, want to find their way to us and struggle to find somewhere that sells the individually made work they want.
It would be wonderful if the National Trust used it's shops to help solve this problem.
My question was prompted by our visits to National Trust properties. At the end of your tour you are often funneled into 'The Gift Shop'. Sharon and I have never bought anything in these shops first of all because the prices are too high and, secondly, because much of their contents appears to be imported and mass produced. There does not appear to be much that is locally produced or of a genuinely craft origin. It's shiny, packaged and bears all the hallmarks of slick marketing strategies and all that nasty 'business' approach where the only thing that matters is the bottom line.
The properties owned by the National Trust were built by skilled stonemasons, carpenters and bricklayers. They were filled with and adorned with beautiful furniture, sculpture, porcelain, fabrics and so on. These items had to be made. They required high levels of skill to be produced. Everything you see in a National Trust property was produced by an individual's hard work and mastery of their craft.
The National Trust spends a great deal of money on preserving the buildings that it owns and the objects they hold. However, does it support the crafts tradition that made these things and encourage it to flourish and grow?
The National Trust Gift Shop 'Experience' is not encouraging. I suspect that the mindset of those that control National Trust retailing is formed by the same 'marketing' ethos that has reduced shopping in England to such a dull, dehumanised level. I suspect that few of them have a ever worked for themselves or made anything with their own hands.
What would we like to see? We would like to see the National Trust actually sell and promote the work of British craft workers.They are part of the tradition that produced the stuff that the National Trust looks after. This tradition needs to be nurtured by the Trust.
It would be nice if the National Trust shops sold a little less twee confectionery and overpriced bead jewellery and more locally made quality crafts.
The biggest problem those of us who are full time craft workers face is the cost of selling what we make. Most of us could never afford to rent a shop, good craft fairs are expensive because hobbyists, who have other sources of income, inflate demand for stalls, with on line selling it's hard to get noticed, and traditional markets [where we sell] are in decline. However good what we make is we have to spend an inordinate amount of time and money trying to find our way to our customers.They, equally, want to find their way to us and struggle to find somewhere that sells the individually made work they want.
It would be wonderful if the National Trust used it's shops to help solve this problem.
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