Max, I don't sell turnings for a living nor to pay for or justify expensive turning gear, so from a position of ignorance I've come to wonder if---
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-art isn't really in the purse of the beholder and affordable art is a non sequitur.
-woodturning beginning as a Hobby doesn't often become a Hobby-business that soon becomes a Business-hobby, then becomes a Business and finally becomes a Trade or Profession that usually alone can't provide a Living.
-I would fit in or could put up with the crass marketplace after enjoying the warm praise of friends and family.
-anyone can tell me what makes for a quality turned piece... or its opposite.
-being a happy slob, is it a good or bad thing for me to be continually disappointed in striving for the impossible; perfection.
-turning to please other turners doesn't lead to disappointment in the market.
-many merchant/artist woodturners aren't doomed by their inherent modesty and excessive reticence.
-many fine turners don't 'make it' because they can't teach or socialize.
-you can't film it, demonstrate it or write about it, can you sell it.
Following on Arch's comment:" I've come to wonder if----art isn't really in the purse of the beholder and affordable art is a non sequitur."
I'd just toss in this only obliquely related observation, coming from a position of one who never sells his turnings, but has purchased the turnings of others, including the "big" names.
Folks purchase artistic turnings for many reasons, including a genuine appreciation for (if not visceral connection to) the object itself,a desire to be some how elevated by an association with a striking object or the artist's reputation, a belief that the work will increase in monetary and/or artistic value (a game in and of itself), and the point I wish to most make here, a desire to support the continued production of an artist's work.
The latter means that the price one pays is not an attempt to obtain a "fair market price" for the current value of the work itself (however that might be valued) but a willingness to pay more than than that intrinsic monetary value as a desire to increase the likelihood that the artist will produce more works of comparable or increased artistic value. Sure, some artists will produce works regardless of whether they can eat well,or have a decent automobile, but for most, the best way to insure that an artist can be free to offer their artistic expressions is to see to it that they can maintain a decent quality of life doing so. That, my friends, means being willing to pay more than what you might be able to obtain some item for elsewhere. Interestingly, I don't find the willingness to do so being all that related to the income of the purchaser, indeed, it seems to me that often folks of limited financial means have more empathy for the artist than those much more financially well off.
Max, this is an extremely important concept that many people, not just turners, do not seem to get! I was in a gallery for a while where I knew several of the other "artists" also in that gallery. Some of them would complain regularly about the gallery taking a cut of their price! There was one lady who thought the gallery should be happy with 10%. Some of them demanded that the gallery's price reflect both the commission and the artist's retail. In this particular gallery, the owner was taking a 30% commission. For a $100 piece, the artist received $70. Some folks demanded that their $100 piece be tagged at $130, all because they deserved the full retail price, and if the gallery wanted their share, it had to be tacked on! As you say, people need to decide what their piece will sell for and then decide of the gallery cut, or the show expense is going to be worth it. That is part of the cost of doing business, regardless of whether or not the person is a professional business person or not.
Amen. It's really no different when Coca Cola sells a can of pop. While the average consumer believes he's paying $1.00 for a can of Coke at the machine, he's actually paying roughly a penny for the liquid, and the rest is advertising, canning, distribution, labor, the pop machine, and so on, ad infinitum. If Coca Cola believed each can was worth $1 for the drink, we'd be paying $2.00 per can, and that might exceed most buyer's willingness to pay. Of course I can remember when an 8 oz. bottle was a dime. Dated myself, didn't I?
They've been there a while, so I must assume your statement is appropriate, Tony. That said, I suspect there also may be the issue of whether the store owner understands turnings. Perhaps the turnings haven't been there as long as other items. That store has a great variety of creations from local artists and artisans, including small woodworking items, jewelry, graphic arts, sculpture, etc. The owner probably knows the market for some things quite well, and is on the inclining part of the learning curve on others. If that bowl and the other item don't sell, he may decide the turnings are either too highly priced, or no market exists for them in his community.
Shortly after WWII, my parents bought a painting from the quintessential struggling artist, a young black man with immense talent and almost no way to market his work. Their empathetic viewpoint was apparently quite similar to that which you've stated above. Ultimately the painting became quite valuable as the artist's output was somewhat limited--he eventually had to find a 'day job'--and he died short of his 40th birthday. My folks sold the painting about 20 years ago, finding it to be more a liability hanging on the wall than an asset. The cost of insuring it became insurmountable.
The point of this is that your desire to help the turner continue to produce is valid, and no doubt the reason some people pay more for turnings than that which might be considered financially reasonable. But it really has little to do with the market for turnings in general. Please set me straight on this if I'm incorrect, but I make my preceding statement with the assumption that fine turnings by even the best in the business don't realize the same level of appreciation that paintings and sculptures by renowned artists do.
I agree completely. But I wasn't equating hourly rate (time in process, really) with market value. A finely made bowl of spalted maple should naturally command a greater price than a simple, utilitarian bowl of the same wood with no fungal enhancement.
My dream (delusion is probably a more appropriate term) is that someday I'll create turnings so beautiful and unique that people will beg me to sell them. Of course I'll refuse, stating "how can one put a price on beauty?" :-)
... your desire to help the turner continue to produce
Two good points.
With respect to the first. I am of the opinion that there are many markets and it is sometimes difficult to draw conclusions from a conceptualization that posits a homogenous market. My comments were largely oriented with respect to primarily woodturnings as nonfunctional-object-of-art. Exemplified by the production of established "artists" (Ellsworth, Jordon, the Lindquists, the Moulthrops as iconic exemplars) and those rising in stature but clearly associated with object-of-art productions (Liestman, Wolfe, Bosche and Vesery being some of the more prominent). If I buy a Jordan or Moulthrop piece in the thousands, or a Piscatelli (one of potential "risings") I allow myself to pay a premium for the reasons I expressed earlier.
Another market is the functional-object-as-also-art. This includes primarily bowls (but also sometimes boxes and candlesticks) of exotic wood or signature shape. This as I see it is exemplified by turners such as Raffan, Stotts, much of Osolnik's work, and even Stocksdale (and more recent turners like Mahoney and perhaps Drozda). In general, their production has been much more influenced by larger market forces, and prices went up only after a reputation was established in other areas (non-functional objects of art, master turner status, etc.). One may still pay a premium for such objects for the reasons expressed earlier, but that desire is tempered by their perceived worth versus more utilitarian renditions of similar utility. After all, just how much is one really going to pay for a candlestick, even if it was made (by the thousands) by Osolnik---actually not that much, particulary compared to what Osolnick might have made for a similarly sized sculpture.
Then there is the market of utilitarian items, that may rise above merely function based on their hand made production, or the qualities of the materials, but which are basically being judged against a market of items of similar utility. I put pens and basic serving/kitchen bowls, and treen, etc. in this category. A wood bodied pen must compete against not only the production of a multitude of local and international woodturners turners, but also against a Mont Blanc on one end and a BIC on the other. It is here that I think many of the earlier comments apply most. Yah, it may take a particular turner 3 hours to create a perfectly shaped and finished pen of Kingwood, but in most cases it is having to compete against woods that appear not all that different produced by turners who can produce an at least superficially similar pen in 10 minutes to 6 hours time. I think here most of your earlier comments are spot on. In the majority of cases, the purchaser has little interest in supporting the turner in their further production, is clearl measuring value against other offerings, and certainly isn't apt to think there has been great value added to their life that they have been associated with the turner's name.
Obviously this is just one way of crudely parsing the varying markets, and of course the distinctions blur on the edges, but I do think a conceptualization based on multiple markets, and the varying characteristics of the buyer as well as maker, results in useful distinctions.
As to your second point of financial value of woodturned nonfunctional-objects-of-art, I think the present and future are unclear in this area. My sense of things, is that woodturnings as nonfunctional-objects-of-art remain a fairly recent phenomeon but has finally become almost fully accepted, and that current prices and future appreciation are apt to begin to achieve parady with other media such as glass and pottery, if not paintings. One thing that I think is affecting this is that the first generation creating nonfunctional-objects-of-art have only recently started to die off(Most of the pioneers in this area who have died, have only done so with the last five years--e.g. the elder Moulthrop and Lindquist, Stocksdale and Osolnik). It is only when supply has ceased that prices of the existing items truly begin to soar. Just try to get some of the early Stocksdale and Osolnik items away from such folks as Martha Connell. If you can, they will come dear. In most other media, which have a much longer history of acceptance as nonfunctional-objects-of-art, the finite production of dead artists begins to raise the value of what even the living produce.
The other thing here, which works against woodturnings as highly valued nonfunctional-objects-of-art is that until recently it was difficult to distinguish these items from functional-objects-of-art, or even functional items. Would the unsophisticated purchaser even distinguish between a hollow form sculture and a Drozda box, let alone between a bowl that Raffan produced and one that was cranked out in a third world sweat shop. There are centuries of art appreciation teaching applied to paintings and inert sculptures, but virtually no teaching of how to appreciate woodturned art (really, when was the last time anyone saw any reference to wood art (studio or woodturned) in an art appreciation textbook. Yet this is changing, and will effect the market. This last century, particular in its latter half, saw the rise of serious appreciation of folk or craft art. This has served as a base for others (specifically Museums such as the Renwick and Mint, Galleries such as the Connell and Del Mano, etc.) to begin to advance the status of woodturned nonfunctional-objects-of-art. I've said a lot more about this in a tentative but unfinished article called Three Facets of Woodturned Art that exists in the archives of this group. So yes, I do think that a market, with all the forces I refered to in the earlier post, is both currently viable and one that I believe will enlarge in the future.
So, part of all of this is just ramblings about a perspective on woodturning that I find interesting, but part of it is meant to sincerely address the larger conversation that has existed in this thread. With respect to the latter, I will reiterate that my sense of things (for whatever that is worth) is that the conversation will be most fruitful if it distinguishes between the differing markets and recognizes that differing forces will come into play according to the market niche in question. For nonfunctional-objects-of-art the forces will be different than for the more utilitarian object, regardless of the care and effort that went into either.
And just a final tangential comment to stir things up. Personally, I think that most embellished woodturnings, specifically those that largely obliterate the unique characteristics of wood, though a great novelty to turners in the present, won't fair that well over the long haul and may actually work against a rising appreciation and acceptance of woodturned nonfunctional-objects-of-art. Frankly, in my view, a lot of current embellishment is primitive and amateurish compared to the developed standard found in other media. Crude carving (and I'm not including the excellent work of folks like Vesery or Jordan here), mechanical texture tooling (Oh I hate chatter tools and the Sorby texturer), dunk and dye jobs, slapped on paint (and I'm not including Giles Gilson here), and cutesy burned and painted on figures and patterns (and I don't include Nittman here), on woodturnings rarely rise to the levels of other media, and frankly would be seen as Kitsch if not a worse embarrasment if found in another media. They are presently novel, but at best amateurishly ape what is better done and more consistent in other medial like pottery or glass or even metal sculpture. What woodturning is capable of that is distinct from those other media is the varying patterns and textures that come directly from nature, and can be preserved in a shaped form. Novel as the work of a Hogbin or Hosaluk is, there is nothing about it that can't be done in another media, but it is very difficult indeed to for another media to mimic the colors and patterns of a Stocksdale bowl in cocobolo or Macassar ebony. So my prediction is that while turners have engaged in embellishment to achieve distinction for themselves, it will ultimately diminish the value and long term acceptance of woodturned nonfunctional-objects-of-art as a distinctive media. Ya can't be something else, and be appreciated for what you uniquely had to offer in the first place.
Yep, you're young. I remember nickel Cokes, though Pepsi gave "12 full ounces" for the same. That people bought Pepsi for the perceived value says something.
Also says something that people feel they're getting ripped at $2 a gallon for gas and pay a buck for a 20 oz soda.
Max, One professional turner in our club is extremely talented both in technique and in art. He makes some of the most beautiful hollow vessels I have ever seen. He can pump one out in less time than it takes me to chainsaw a piece and mount it on the lathe. That said, he rarely makes hollow vessels or any other art pieces. He prefers to freelance for a furniture factory making
So Tony, where is your stuff going in? I was in a gallery in Bethlehem for a while, and just as I was starting to do really well there, she went belly up. I hope you fare better than that!
Some of us remember when men & boys swigged a 'cold dope' from thick ribbed green fat bellied six oz. bottles. Five cents and we never heard of Classic. In drug stores with white-tiled floors, ladies & girls drank their 'co-colas' from thin walled clear wasp waisted glasses, while sitting in dainty twisted wire triangular chairs beside glass topped tables. Two drops of ammonia were added for ladies suffering the green vapors of the lunar curse. The more adventurous females risked a squirt of cherry, chocolate or vanilla syrup. I always wore a white cap & apron and said my best 'yes ma'ams' while serving their cocolas. I was more important then than I've ever been since.
Then came the great depression and with it 12 oz. bottles of RrrerC (Royal Crown). Later came that 10, 2 & 4 Texas interloper and that sweet 'belly-wash' with its jingle "Twelve full ounces, that's a lot, twice as much for a nickel too, Pepsi Cola is the drink for you!" Things got even worse with NeHi Cola and hit rock bottom when I headed to New England and learned the bitterness of that Yankee drink, Moxie. I did get a good education and an even better wife up there (she still claims that Moxie is an acquired taste and not for rednecks). Think I'll go out to the shop and turn a classic coke bottle for old time's sake. What's a good drink-safe finish? :) I said this would be Long.
A NeHigh Grape was mighty good with salty peanuts in it, and an RC went well with the old stand by, Moon Pie. A fellow could make a meal out of that and some good cheese.
About 25 years ago I bought on of those for $50, removed the slot template, and used it as a reefer for bottles, cans, etc. Worked great, until I quit using it about five years later. This summer I plugged it in and voila! it still works. How's that for quality?!
I don't know about you but I am. I worked as a soda jerk while I was in high school. Always a good way to make a little 'time' with the girls was to put a little extra on their ice cream cone. That was in the forties.
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