2 hours ago
6
As the recipient of an unwanted gift, is it necessary to pretend you like it? This is what most of us are trained to do as children; for some it was our first experience of being instructed to lie.
“Thank you,” I might have said to my grandmother, “for this frilly, itchy lace-trimmed dress identical to the one you gave my sister. I love it.”
After lying through your teeth comes the dilemma of what to do with the unwanted itchy dress/humping turtles salt and pepper shakers/patchouli-scented candle. Or the perfume that reminds you of cat urine, the vase shaped like a brick, the hat that looks like an unrolled condom. Do you regift it? Give it to the op shop? What would happen if the giver were to discover this?
I was given a painting by a generous friend – painted by an artist she knew. She asked me what I thought of it and I said it was beautiful. It was – it is – but it wasn’t something I’d have chosen for myself. It wasn’t my style and I didn’t know how to say this politely.
I hung it in the guest bedroom but, when I moved house and had to downsize, I took it to an op shop several suburbs away, thinking I was safe in my subterfuge. Weeks passed before I received a call from this friend.
“You took the painting I gave you to Vinnies!”
Turns out her artist friend lived in the suburb of the op shop I selected. Worse, he often browsed there for canvases. Upon discovering his own art he bought it back then reported his horror. I felt like digging a hole in the earth and disappearing into it.
“Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t like it?” my friend asked.
To salve my shame, I had to ask others about their most embarrassing gift faux pas.
One friend didn’t realise that when she advertised something on Facebook Marketplace it would be visible to all of her friends and relatives. So, when she tried to sell an unwanted gift, the giver (mortifyingly) messaged her.
“I’ve since changed my settings,” she said. “So that what I sell is NOT visible to my family and friends.”
A writer recalled a man she knew who took it upon himself to educate his (younger) girlfriends with gifts of books. He subsequently discovered all of the Jeannette Winterson novels he had bought one ex-girlfriend in an op shop, still bearing the loving messages he had inscribed.
As it turned out, Winterson’s novels had helped the ex in her realisation she was more interested in women than men.
Another writer recalled her artist mother giving a painting to a specialist as a thank-you gift, and years later a stranger later contacting her mother to say they had bought the painting at an op shop in a completely different part of the state.
“My mother refused to believe that it was the same painting she gave to the specialist,” the writer said. “She never accepted that it went to an op shop.”
From an artist’s perspective, it might be confronting to see your work in a charity shop, but what about a council clean-up?
An artist I know had a friend discover one of her paintings in someone else’s house, hung in the living room. When asked where she bought it, the woman said she’d found it on the kerb.
“I wasn’t deeply offended,” the artist said. “I was more delighted that someone picked it up.”
As a novelist and frequent op shopper, I have checked the shelves for my own books and discovered signed copies. Even, once, a signed copy dedicated to someone I know.
Was I horrified? No, because I’ve given away author-inscribed books as well. There isn’t room on my shelves for all of them.
Perhaps creators should be pleased their works are finding new homes. They’re not hiding away in attics or garages, or even worse: bins.
The artist recommends honesty as the best policy when you receive a work of art you do not like.
“Tell the giver it’s not your style. Say, ‘I would not appreciate it as much as I should.’
“Art is personal and we only have so much wall space, you’ve really got to love what you put up.”
But what if you have tried courage and failed, and you still have an unwanted piece of art, hand-knitted puce jumper or inscribed book?
I’m reminded of the story of an international author who visited Australia and could not fit all the dedicated, signed copies of books she was given into her suitcase. Before flying home, she turned to someone she was with and passed her the books.
“I’m going to need you to eat these,” she said.
