Should Assemblers Be Allowed To Sell At Craft Shows?
As you look around at the different craft shows today, it’s sad to see how many people are selling “crafts” that they put little or no effort into. It brings up the question of what has happened to the true craft show. Having done craft shows for almost 30 years, I’m not sure I can answer the question.
To me a true crafter is one who makes everything from scratch that they sell. I don’t believe you can call yourself a crafter if you simply buy pieces of precut wood, and only paint them. There’s no real crafting being done. The same is true for those who sell preassemble jewelry, or buy stuffed dolls and bears and only dress them. I have seen this happen for as long as I have been doing craft shows.
When I was first doing the shows, the true crafter would call these crafts, Granny Crafts. The people would buy a kit, make it up and sell it as their own. This has always irritated the true crafter.
Today more and more of the things sold at craft shows are kits or down right commercial products. Who is the blame for this? Is it the crafter who isn’t making the money they use too or is it the promoter who will take anyone who has the money for the show? Or maybe the potential customer? In reality, all are contributing to the problem.
Some promoters are good people with good intentions and some are just out for the money. When shows were few and far between, promoters would take the time to ask what the people made. They would ask for pictures, or check you out at another show. After a while, people just decided that being a promoter could make them some good money by getting a show together and they got greedy.
Over time there was proliferation of shows, sometimes every weekend at the same site, and the true crafter all of a sudden wasn’t making any money. This resulted in them dropping out of some of the shows. This then made the promoter ask for more money to be in the show or take whoever would do the show. This let in a lot of the commercial products that we see today.
Even the types of shows being put together don’t really qualify as craft shows. Think of the big shows that are in every large city in the country, that are held in convention centers. Are these true craft
shows? I don’t think so. They promote the show as a handcrafted show but usually the people who are selling the products, don’t make the products themselves. They have other people make the products at home or in a factory. These shows are usually juried, which is an added expense, and the show itself is very expensive.
Promoters will probably be upset with me saying these things about them. And, I know that it costs more to advertise today and more to procure a site for a show. There is certainly a lot of work and expense
in setting up a show. But, I feel that the costs have got out of hand.
What about the crafter? How do they contribute to this problem? Many people may have started out making everything themselves. But, with the cost of supplies, travel and the cost of the show, they too started to add products that would sell but they didn’t make. This made them a profit alright, but is that what the customer wanted when they went to the show to buy handcrafted items? Is this comprise worth it? Now they are no longer a true crafter and I think the customer is really the one who loses.
The customer can also contribute to the problem. They can go to the discount retailer and buy, what they think is the same thing, for less money. They don’t seem to realize that the cost to make something by
hand is higher than the giant who buys their products overseas and in bulk. Also if something is made by hand, no two are ever alike, even when they are made from the same pattern. It is the uniqueness of the
handcrafted product that makes it special. There are times when I think only the true crafter understands this concept.
I am a true crafter and still like to get out to do some shows. I have gotten use to being beside commercial vendors, and it doesn’t bother me as much as it once did. Still, it is sad to me to see how it has changed and lost the essence of the “true” craft show.
Check out Eva’s teddy bear site.
As an artist who makes waldorf dolls from start to finish it is discourage to be in a show with “crafters” who really aren’t.
It is definitely a catch-22 situation. We all want to sell products when we pay money to participate at an event but we also want to sell the items we have taken the time, energy and resources to develop for the event. Personally, I would rather participate in a smaller event that is well advertised as a handmade craft show and only allows handmade items than a larger sale that allows anything in. True artisan-type items cannot (and should not try) to compete with a mass market item. i.e. I would prefer a handmade quilt to a manufactured blanket/throw.
We are talking more and more about ‘green’ and ‘going back to basics’; well, what could be more basic than the crafts learned from and practiced by the settlers of this country who came with practically nothing and had to make do or do without? There are some valuable lessons inherent in this type of item. This is handmade at its purest form and this is what we should be adhering to as Handmade Crafts…not something we buy, paint or tinker with and then pass off as hand made!
The article by Eve Summers was one that was well-researched and very well written.
Eve has ‘hit the nail on the head’ .. Crafters are those who have a skill and share it. It’s a perfect time in our society to complement and support real crafters. That support has to start somewhere and if those who arrange ‘craft shows’ kept it to what the name implies .. we would be off to a running start.
The mass produced articles and the huge ‘name brand’ companies have many other venues in which to sell their product. Bring the cost prices down for the true crafter.. and those who attend will readily know that they truly are purchasing the real thing.
Most crafters simply do not make even close to the kind of monies that are available to the mass produced marketers. More and more hand-done merchandise can be presented in these forums, and the creators will in turn, be in the limelight for some well-deserved recognition and acknowledgement.
Kudos to Eve Summers! and Thank You
This is a very interesting and complicated question. Personally, I don’t understand why, in the last Art and Craft Show I made, I had just beside me some people who were selling ties “made in China”, and I won’t speak of the ugliness of these ties, as it depends on each point of view, but really, it was not the purpose of that show, and even if these people were very nice and if these ties have been made by poor Chinese children who probably had no other choice than making them for a tiny amount of money, I don’t think it was what the craft fans were expecting to see by coming there.
Nevertheless, I would say that sometimes we have to make choices which are not the best. For example, I used to make tote bags, from the beginning to the end, by designing them myself, sewing them, painting them and decorating them with sequins and embroideries. I was far from earning what it did actually cost me in supplies and time, but they were beautiful in a very “French Top Chic” style, while my benefits were everything except “top” and “chic”. So, I had to find already-made and cheap bags, to focus only on the painting and adornment jobs, so I could live a little better for a while, but this way of doing certainly lowered the quality of my work.
If some people buy kits in art and craft supplies stores, and then, come in these markets, believing they are crafters, I think we have here a serious problem here, as these people really don’t know the meaning of “crafter”.
Anyway, it is the responsibility of all of us : crafters, promoters, customers, to “re-ajust the shot”. Crafters should refuse to sell in shows where there are those kinds of goodies and should explain why to promoters. Promoters must understand that in the long term, their markets could disappear, because why people would pay to visit a show where most sold items are the same as the ones they have in their supermarket or along the beaches ? At least, the name “art and craft show” will have to go, as it wouldn’t be the case anymore. And unfortunately, many customers don’t understand anything about what we are doing. At my last show, a customer was telling his friend that he liked how I decorated one of my bags. The other one answered “we have absolutely the same (?) at home”. I don’t know how he could have the same, as it came out from my imagination, and my bags are all one-of-a-kind ?
Would this mean that crafts are bound to educated people who knows how to make the difference between crafted items and the rest, and how appreciating them ?
Are Popular Arts not supposed to be for everyone ?
I think something Yael said brings up another closely related question. At what point is someone a crafter as opposed to an assembler?
Obviously everyone is buy supplies for their crafts. People buy paint, fabric, plastic eyes and joints. All of this is used in making the crafts.
But at some point, there is so little work that goes into it, that it ceases to become one’s own creation.
It seems to me that at least one criteria to answering the question has to do with design. Did the “crafter” actually design the craft?
In other words, it came from their imagination. It isn’t a ready made kit. They came up with the idea, layout and design of the craft.
The design part seems essential to me. What does everyone else think?
A very interesting discussion. My wife and I are in the process of starting a home business making and selling craft items. While we are both new at what we want to do, our company mission statement reads, “Providing a quality product for the discerning customer”.
While this might seem to lead one to believe that we will include items purchased for resale, that is in no way what we plan on doing. While we may purchase plans and specialty parts, for the most part we will be spending a lot of time creating anything we feel is worthy of being put out for sale.
I believe that even if you buy a kit, paint or finish the parts and assemble the parts into a saleable object then you are guilty of being a craft person and should be allowed to sell your items as “craft” items and in a craft show. Many people over the years have turned in beautiful craft objects following designs and directions in a book.
Buying a completed item and then selling it in a “craft” show to me is both wrong morally and ethically. When I go to a craft show, I’m looking for something that has been made by the person at the booth, or at least someone in their family or a very close friend.
I think that pretty much sums up my idea’s and thoughts.
Assemblers are not crafters at all. I had this discussion several years ago with people I worked with. I was doing Cavendoli macrame at the time. I started by making a sketch, made the graph, measured the cord and tied every knot.
My position was that someone who bought a basket, a bow and a glue gun and then glued the bow to the basket had not made anything and were not crafters. The glue-gunners in the office loudly disagreed.
I am now doing things with polymer clay and am frequently asked if I made all of the items myself. People seem surprised when I say yes.
A true crafter puts skill and talent into everything they do. This is not the same as stringing beads out of a kit or selling garish items made overseas.
I think there needs to me a balance of the amount of work each crafter put into the product. It’s hard to put a cut and dried example on this. I craft and desisn my items from scratch and proud of it. But what about the one who buys fleese material, cuts it and sells it as a blanket throw???? Too many variables. And every show you see items that can be bought at the dollar store listed as hand crafted, but by who?
if you don’t make it from scratch - not putting purchase pieces together- then you shouldn’t be allowed in a craft show - I spend to much time creating and crocheting my items to have someone buy kits and put them together - it’s hard enough to get into shows without having others who do not do the complete work appear - we are having people purchase items from overseas and claim they made it - it’s not fair and they shouldn’t expect to sell at art/craft shows - let them go to a flea market
I used to work in an Art and Craft supplies store named “Rougier & Ple” in Paris (it became “Crea” now) and many kits were sold there, most of them were coming from USA. But we knew that only children or grandmother or people who make that like a hobby would maybe buy it. And as a teacher in that store, I was supposed to create new ideas and new items, and not make a kit, to bring something new for the customers. I really think that kits are made for amateurs and true professional crafters are supposed to design their products themselves, because otherwise, they should maybe pay royalties to the original designers of the sold kits. Even when I use a stamp I like in my work, I always wonder if the artist who drew this stamp is not going to ask for royalties from me… That’s why I begin to make my own stamps, as I’ve been used to make my own stencils.
But when a crafter restores a piece of furniture or some vintage China, we can’t say he makes everything, nevertheless his skills allow him to give a new life to these things, and the good ones really are true crafters. So, except for the kits question whose the answer seems to me obvious, there are other cases for which it’s not so obvious. It’s like if we asked an artist to build his frames and canvases himself. Some artists I know do that but not most of them, and if Picasso was painting on a already-ready canvas, yet he wouldn’t stop being an artist. I think a crafter is allowed to customize things he loves and still being a crafter, don’t you think ?
I believe that the products sold at a craft show should be hand crafted. I am a rubber stamper/paper artist and spend a lot of time making each individual item that I sell. I will never make what it costs me in time (mostly) and money to create my crafts. When I look around my booth and see the number of people buying from those selling commercial items, I get very frustrated.
It appears that the consensus opinion is that if I were to go down to the local lumber yard and buy all the neccessary wood, bring it home, cut, assemble, sand and finish it, then I would be considered a crafter but if I were to buy a kit with the wood cut to the proper size, then I would not. This even though I still have to assemble, sand and put my desired finish on it.
Must be that there is no skill required to assemble, sand and finish wooden projects, only to purchase wood and cut it to required sizes. Then the skill must be in going to the local lumber yard, paying for the limber and bringing it home.