features

Bin there, done that

There’s a 1964 caravan moored outside, so this is definitely the place.

At the turn of the stairs I am greeted by repeated reflections of myself from a wall of mirrors of various shapes and sizes. Framed pages from old music manuscripts mount the stairs with me. A vacuum cleaner of uncertain vintage, but definitely an intruder in the internet age, nestles beside another set of narrow, stairs up to attic bedrooms.

I ask Kate Shipp, half of the artist couple who live and work from this unusual Sydenham home, to describe their style. “Everything is something found that we’ve used. I would describe our style as Quite Eccentric,” she says to me across the door which serves as their dining table. She pours tea made on a gas stove which probably dates back to the 1940s. “The gas fitter refused to fit it because it didn’t comply with modern safety standards.” Its neat, rounded edges are a world away from the sleek polished lines of today’s appliances.

The room I am sitting in contains a plan chest found on the street and the walls are papered with the uncut sheets from a book of classical French poetry. “The house hadn’t been decorated since the 1970s,” Kate says. “That was all right for us – it made it cheaper. In the bedroom we simply stripped down the layers till we found this.” A bold floral print sprawls across the walls of their attic bedroom, beneath and around a pair of metal torsos. As working artists they carry the theme of recycling into their work.

Over the fireplace a car bonnet is a huge, burnished frame for a portrait; Mark makes greetings cards with hand-pressed flowers, leaves and feathers and Kate’s film work uses local sources and props. Their art nestles comfortably amongst found objects in this ageless space, less museum than living gallery, the collection of objects from other people’s lives, used and now re-used with quirky defiance in this throw-away age. I was quite taken with the Mona Lisa tea-towel (or was it a small table cloth?) draped over the banister.

“There are a few things we would buy new, like kids’ shoes and food. If there’s say a particular book one of the children wants then we’ll get that, but I would say 95% of the stuff we buy is pre-used. It’s cheap to live this way, though that’s not the primary reason. It’s probably a bit of a hangover from student days. This way you get to have stuff that isn’t like anyone else’s. It’s a bit anti-fashion, I suppose. And there are environmental reasons for living this way. There’s less manufacturing involved, no new processing has happened to produce anything here.

“It’s very beneficial for the children – they use their imagination all the time. They do a lot of dressing up, going to the park reading. They read tons. We play a lot of games together. They don’t get teased at school, quite the opposite. When their friends come round it’s like going into a fantasy world.”

Many things have come from car boot sales or second-hand shops but most have been rescued from skips, including all their beds. Kate smiles. “Mark was getting a bed out of a skip one day when a bloke inside the house shouted out ‘Oi! Look after that bed! I was born on that!’“

So how does this recycled living work? “You just have to keep your eyes open,” says Kate. “If there’s something we need, we keep it in mind when we go car-booting. See what we find. It’s a bit different to people that live the classic consumer lifestyle where it’s all about a particular product. We’re not ever in a rush for anything. It’s a slower way of living, a process. We do it on a budget, but you could go to an antiques shop. A friend of mine has kitted her place out totally in vintage 1970s style. That’s the beauty of it. You can do it in the style that you like if you don’t want to have the same stuff everyone else does. If people can see that it’s not really a painful thing they might be tempted to do things differently too. If it was really painful we definitely wouldn’t be doing it.”

To find Mark and Kate on the web, visit www.ship.hill-inc.com or www.markhillcards.co.uk

Set your own style
You may not be ready for skip-diving, but there are gems to be snapped up at car boot sales around London
Wimbledon
Wimbledon Stadium, Plough Lane SW17, Saturdays 7.30am-12.30pm
Battersea
Battersea Tec College, Battersea Park Road SW11 (entrance in Dagnall Street), Sundays 1.30-5pm
Bermondsey
Aylwin Secondary School, 55 Southwark Park Road SE16, Sundays from 11am
Lewisham Hospital
University Hospital, High Street SE13, Saturdays and Sundays from 6am
Chiswick
Chiswick School, Burlington Lane W4, first Sunday of the month except January 7am-1.30pm