Addicted To :: ShavingKitSuppplies

The shop of today’s interviewee features an assortment of wonderful (and slightly odd) curiosities – my favorite! And “weird” is Joanne’s favorite too. Her personal aesthetic is the slightly offbeat; the ever-so-slightly creepy. This feeling definitely comes through to her shop, shavingkitsuppplies. It shines in the items she stocks, the staging of the photos, and the stark feel of the shop. I adore it! Read on to learn more about Joanne and her vintage addiction.

Q: Tell our lovely readers a bit about yourself. Is buying and selling vintage your full-time gig or a hobby? How and when did you get started in this business?

A: Hi, lovely readers! My name is Joanne. I live in PA in the USA, and I have two shops on Etsy – a vintage shop and a paper ephemera shop. I’m *horrible* at naming things (even worse than Frank Zappa), which is why my shops have names that make no sense. I have two children, and luckily my husband helped name them. If it had been totally left to me their names would probably be Dog-eared Catalog Pages and Exhaust Fumes From Buses.

I started selling on Etsy in 2007 (I think) because it was either downscale or divorce. I chose to downscale. I have a lot of good things. I sell my good things on Etsy. When someone buys something, I get to go buy two things to replace it!

Hmm, I guess I haven’t quite grasped the concept of downscaling yet, huh.

Q: Do you have any favorite, never-let-you-down, treasure hunting spots? Would you like to share, or are they top-secret?

A: There’s an auction house near me (Stephenson’s) that never fails to have the most amazing lots of goods. It’s easy to find a box loaded with various estate sale finds there for ten dollars. It’s insane. There’s also a small chain of thrift shops called Impact near me, they support a lot of local charities, so I like to frequent their shops when I can – good buys there! I like to go into Philadelphia and shop some of the thrift shops mentioned in this post, too.

Q: Is there a certain aesthetic you look for when you’re thrifting? How do you decide what to pick up, or just pass on? Do you wait for an item to speak to you?

A: I buy a little of everything. Cute/pretty is good. So is weird. My personal aesthetic is weird. I like anything medical or slightly disturbing – the sort of thing that makes you do a double-take. I also like tacky 60s Christmas, mid-century, anything white. I love water stains. I also like putting together “starter kits”….instant collections of things…usually three of something. Those are fun to sell, fun to buy.

When I come across a glass or ceramic piece that I like, I close my eyes and feel every inch with my fingers, trying to find chips and cracks and rough edges. I won’t sell chipped or cracked glass, although I will keep it for myself.

Right now I’m collecting vintage bottles and containers to put scents in. For years I’ve been making homemade solid perfumes and bath salts and scented vinegars and such for friends and family for gifts, and I’m hopefully, soonish, going to start another Etsy shop to sell those things, possibly along with some thrifted vintage containers to put them in. I may even stock this shop with an actual shaving kit supply – one of the things I make is shaving soap. So armed with that knowledge and my penchant for misnaming everything, my scent shop will probably be called “Bulletin Board Tacks”.

Q: Be honest, do you keep many of your finds, or is it strictly business? And do you have any personal collections that you have built over time through thrifting?

A: I have a lot of collections which I’ve built through thrifting, much to my husband’s dismay: mercury glass, old bottles, milk glass, penmanship books, white pottery, linen, sundials, old medicine packaging, starfish, old coral, to name a few. I recently started a nice collection of original landscape paintings, most of which I’ve purchased at Etsy. I love looking at a wall of paintings of trees; it’s very calming. You can see most of the stuff I’ve purchased at Etsy via the feedback in my paper ephemera shop. I’m a power buyer!

I definitely keep one for every two things I buy. The more decrepit and worn something is, the more I love it. It’s very comforting to surround yourself with things that have stories to tell – things that show their history. Freshly painted walls are an anathema to me. I only feel really drawn to things when they have a timeworn quality.

Q: Are there any items you’ve regretted selling and wish you would have kept for yourself?

A: Yes! This old painting. I listed it and immediately had lister’s regret and decided to keep it, because I had had it propped for days above an old secretary cabinet that I had refinished and it really looked so amazing there. It was not in the best condition, which I found very appealing. Lots of the paint had flaked or scraped off, but the colors were vibrant and deep. I found his expression and his dandyness very intriguing. I logged onto Etsy to deactivate it and it had been sold, within minutes of being listed. I came to discover that the buyer worked at an art gallery, so now I wonder what she knew that I didn’t.

Q: Pick one and tell us about it: Weirdest, most valuable, or most satisfying find?

A: I’ve found SO many weird things that it’s ridiculous. The weirdest is probably a string of human vertebrae. I found it in a box at a local thrift shop. I couldn’t bring myself to buy it. It was an entire backbone and it was in very good condition. It’s actually still in the shop where I first discovered it, I can’t imagine why no one wants a human vertebrae. In the same shop on the same day I found a gorgeous very old mounting of a beetle in a riker box frame. Very 1950s science class. The beetle was beautiful, the matting job was very nice. The drawback was that the beetle juice (don’t say that three times) had leaked out of the beetle and so the beetle was nestled in a pool of dried brown…..ooze. Needless to say, I passed on that as well!

I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Joanne. Check out both her shops (shavingkitsuppplies and shavingkit) to explore her wonderful world of weird.

Robin Eastwood is a treasure hunter and vintage fanatic. Visit The Fancy Lamb on Etsy to drool over some of her latest finds, and follow Robin on Twitter to hear about her latest thrifting adventures.