Just yesterday I took a phone call from a\u00a0promoter\u00a0who had a\u00a0question\u00a0about our certified hand crafted program.<\/p>\n
She was having trouble sorting out some of the submissions for her show and thought the idea of\u00a0certifying\u00a0artists\u00a0would make her life easier. \u00a0No\u00a0doubt\u00a0it would and that is part of what we had in mind when we started the program but there are a number of ways to\u00a0ferret\u00a0out imported\u00a0Chinese\u00a0crap.<\/p>\n
No offence to the Chinese as a race but there seems to be a never ending stream of mass produced goods coming into shows that are suppose to be hand crafted by the artist.<\/p>\n
I would be one of the first people to\u00a0recognize\u00a0there is a market for these items. \u00a0Just because I deem an item cheesy, cheap or\u00a0shoddy\u00a0made does not mean someone else would\u00a0cherish\u00a0the same item. \u00a0In fact one trouble with quality hand crafted goods is they are often expensive and lets face it, not everyone can afford expensive art.<\/p>\n
So how to make sure the items are truly hand crafted?<\/p>\n
Well one way is to become familiar with some of the import catalogs. \u00a0Just to day I was shown a catalog with the name Country and House in the title. \u00a0I am not going to name it but the web site would be easy to find. \u00a0One look and I\u00a0recognized\u00a0many\u00a0items\u00a0I have seen at shows, \u00a0supposedly\u00a0hand crafted.<\/p>\n
Another way would be to do a web search for wholesale country crafts and hang on to your hat!<\/p>\n
Promoters\u00a0should\u00a0browse\u00a0the booths, taking note of the wares. \u00a0What is the chance that 2 \u00a0or 3 artists are really making the same style signs with the same messages and same\u00a0weathered\u00a0frames. \u00a0My\u00a0apologies\u00a0to the artists who actually make weathered signs. \u00a0This is only a small example, there are many other instances.<\/p>\n
Most\u00a0serious\u00a0artists realize that\u00a0promoters\u00a0have\u00a0their\u00a0hands full but by the same token many serious artists are willing to help keep the shows clean. \u00a0Confronting a vendor\u00a0during\u00a0a show with\u00a0accusations\u00a0of bringing in buy sell goods can be messy. \u00a0Lets face it, people who who would knowing\u00a0mislead\u00a0the jury and\u00a0falsely\u00a0represent goods as\u00a0their\u00a0own are liable to be very defensive,\u00a0especially\u00a0when caught in the act.<\/p>\n
Serious\u00a0artists also know that\u00a0promoters\u00a0are under pressure to fill the booths but at what cost. \u00a0It really \u00a0comes down to the question of whether the\u00a0promoter\u00a0wants a\u00a0terrific\u00a0show that is productive year after year, or a flea market.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just yesterday I took a phone call from a\u00a0promoter\u00a0who had a\u00a0question\u00a0about our certified hand crafted program. She was having trouble sorting out some of the submissions for her show and thought the idea of\u00a0certifying\u00a0artists\u00a0would make her life easier. \u00a0No\u00a0doubt\u00a0it would and that is part of what we had in mind when we started the program […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-promoter-resource"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsandcraftsnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsandcraftsnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsandcraftsnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsandcraftsnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsandcraftsnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsandcraftsnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsandcraftsnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsandcraftsnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsandcraftsnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsandcraftsnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}