Craft Fair, Art Festival – is there a difference?

@ndillon, @SMeekWoodworks, @JGrecoTweets had a bit of a discussion over on twitter about selling Artisan projects at a craft fair, and whether or not is was a reasonable thing to do.

With that in mind I went to the Cherry Creek Arts Festival this afternoon. I had planned on going already, but this discussion gave me a little bit more focus to the afternoon.

As a point of reference, I almost always pay the most attention to woodworker’s and photographer’s booths when I go to these things as that’s where my interest (and what little talent I have) exists, so it’s interesting to see what others are doing in these areas.

No need to talk about the photography here. I think there was really only two booths that were what I would call photography – the others were Digital Art (and some were actually labeled as such.) On the woodworker side there was about 4 or 5 booths. I talked to one of them for about 15 minutes. That’s as much on me as on them as I’m not a people person. I have to just jump in and start talking to someone that seems approachable. Most of the guys (in this case all the woodworkers were male) sat in the back of the booth, or even behind it.

The guy I talked to actually was the assistant to the woodworker as the woodworker wasn’t there at the time. I asked if it was worth it to do these sorts of shows. He told me that they tend to sell smaller things at these sorts of events (he had some small tables, about 12″ square, 30″ tall – estimates, I didn’t actually measure or ask dimensions, some leaf shaped cutting boards, stem contrasting wood to the rest of the leaf, a rocking chair, a storage “thing”, and had 18×20 or so images of other projects hanging on the walls) but what they really get from it is commissions following the event.

Another booth was a gentleman that made Arts and Crafts inspired clocks. For the most part these were 12″ to 14″ tall, made from dark woods and had either stone or patinaed copper inserts. I really liked the stone inserts – they were figured sandstone, rough surfaced, and to my mind they are what really made the pieces. One clock even had a bookmatch set of stone inserts.

There was the booth where the gentleman made Shaker boxes. One stack of nesting boxes, I think 8 or 9 of them was taller than me, the entire stack was priced at a little over $1,000.

The other woodworker booth I looked at did “dressers”, cutting boards, and wall vases. He had a definite style, almost everything he had was birds eye maple and walnut. The walnut was in the form of a wandering line through the top surface with varying sized round walnut inlays. The “dressers” were stacks of drawers, usually 6, alternating light/dark wood fronts, constructed as individual rectangles and slightly offset from each other (1″ to 1 1/2″ side to side, aligned up the front) and a piece of veneer on the side so the grain matched top to bottom.

The other two were turners. Not something I spent a lot of time with as it’s something I don’t do. One did bowls, usable things (sign said all bows were food safe.) There were 4 of them, ranging from about 26″ down to 18″ that clearly all came from the same tree. He said it was the largest Monkeypod tree in Oregon and he was lucky to get it. Very nice work and he must have a monster lathe The second turner did decorate vases. the necks were clearly natural wood, but the bodies were constructed of things like copper wire around wood and some sort of black filler.

While I was there he sold his smallest piece on display, a vase about 4″ in diameter at the largest and about 6″, maybe 7″ tall. He explained how he did that one, by stacking small pieces of wood, copper, brass, aluminum, glued up with epoxy and clamped down. Once it was cured he sliced it up and applied it to the vase, then finished turning it.

OK, OK – next time I’ll grab some pictures.

These were definitely not your inexpensive craft things. That small vase was $250. The 6 stacks of dressers were $2900. The clocks ranged from $400 to $800. The vases were up in the 4 figures.

And, to be honest, maybe I’ve been hanging around people like Charles Neil, Adam King, Scott Meek, John Greco, etc too much, but I just wasn’t that impressed by the level of craftsmanship in these. The turners were actually the best, I think.

The first guy I talked to had that dresser on display. Curved front, 3 drawers on top, 4 doors across underneath, maybe 60″ wide. The drawer fronts were nice, clearly one piece of wood. The dovetails were handcut but showed gaps. The drawers wouldn’t open without extreme pressure (kind of odd as it’s not all that humid here in Colorado, but we have been having rain and with it sitting “outside” (but under cover) that could certainly have an effect. The doors were wrapped in veneer – you could see it wrapped around the 4 sides and the top of the door was a different wood. It looked nice from across the booth.

The stacked drawer dressers. The rectangles the drawers fit in to were butt jointed together and wrapped in veneer. The drawer fronts were screwed on. Tops looked good with the birds eye and walnut, but it’s nothing I would have valued at $2900 either.

The Shaker boxes looked good. Used copper nails to hold it together, in most cases they were domestic boxes with exotic lids. Not sure I’d pay the price, but these folks obviously paid attention to their craft.

The clocks looked good from a distance. I’m not sure what kind of wood he used, but I’m pretty sure it was stained as you could see small white areas in the bottom of the depressions in the grain. Joint edges weren’t necessarily seamless.

It is entirely possible that I’m being too critical here and I welcome your comments on that, or any other aspect of this post.

I’m not sure that I’ve addressed the main point of the discussion that was held on twitter earlier today at all. I can say with assurance that there wasn’t anyone there selling $15 birdhouses nailed together, so maybe the only contribution I can make to the discussion is that it pays to know what level the event is aimed at. I’d guess it’s unlikely that you’ll be selling expensive pieces in a place that also allows those birdhouses. It’s a different sort of clientèle that is browsing from booth to booth.