I went to a Liverpool shop which 'some people don't get'
Located in a former stable, Artefact on Roscoe Street is not what it seems when you first walk in. On your left is a barista serving coffee.
There tends to be people working away on the big table. Others will take a seat on the comfy couches in the corner and take a look at the 1993 Sega Mega Drive video game console.
Everything points to it being a slightly quirky café but, as I’ve learnt, all is not what it seems. Look closely and you’ll spot small price tags next to every item of furniture. All the couches, chairs and sturdy tables are available to buy.
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In the words of James Symonds, who runs Artefact along with his partner Jane Allen and her son Alex Allen, “everything is up for sale”. James, 50, from Aigburth, told me: “I think some people don't get it. They come in and think, oh, you must have just meant some of the bits are for sale.
“And you have to say, no, literally everything. The chair you sit on, you can buy it if you want. You still have people who walk in and go, is the vintage shop out the back? You're like, no, the bins are out the back. They know that it is a vintage shop and they don't quite get that it's everything.
“I suppose it’s a difficult concept for people to grasp because there are so many places in the city which decorate their premises with vintage furniture and things like that. People just think it's set dressing here, but it's not. This is a shop.”
James, Jane and Alex, 25, had been selling vintage furniture for years but were finding it increasingly hard to stock their stock at pop-up shops and shows, with their findings filling up two storage lockers and their family home.
Last year, they decided they needed a dedicated place to sell their furniture and found the site on Roscoe Street. But rather than just open a shop, their landlord told them they’d “be mad” if they didn’t make it into a coffee shop given its prime location.
With Artefact, they took most of the vintage furniture out of boxes and placed it in the café. It means the interior is constantly changing as items are sold and replaced. A year on from opening, James and Jane argue Artefact has become much more than a shop, housing art classes, student society meetings and music gigs.
James said: “Now we're doing events - not something we ever really thought that we'd be doing to start with, but we're very much enjoying it because a lot of young performers are coming through here.
“An awful lot of people in the city expect them to sell tickets, so these people can't perform. So we'll let them play here for free, we have equipment they can use. It gives them the start of a portfolio and they can use that to get gigs elsewhere.”
Jane said: “It feels like a bit of a community creative hub sort of thing. People feel safe here. It's a comfortable place - that's what we get told.
“With those sorts of words, we're very, very happy because we like to feel that this is a little bit of us. This is basically home from home for us. The fact that people vibe with that and people are comfortable with that, it's fantastic.
“We have people that are regulars. We're just at this point now where we've had students who were here last year and discovered us, are now coming back after being away from the summer.”
You can see the old furniture as merely an interesting feature, but something that James said stuck with me. Pointing to the table and chairs next to us, James said: “That’s from 1953. There’s no carbon footprint left on that. It’s 70 years old and it’s still going strong.” The £600 Chesterfield coach that I was sitting on was from 1932.
“In the same way you get fast fashion, you get fast furniture. They are cutting down forests to make stuff that's forced grown forestry. It's cut down young, there's all the manufacturing costs and they're basically producing something that's a copy of an old thing when you can buy the original. With this, there's nothing being cut down and the originals are very well made anyway.”
James, who is originally from Oxfordshire and has lived in London and North Wales, has made Liverpool his home through the venture. He said: I've lived in various places over the years. Liverpool pulled me in.
“It does have a special magic all of its own. It's got such amazing senses of community. The art scene, the music scene, movies, everything. There's such good communities and there's different layers to all of them.”