A hotel in Kalamaria offered me 2.400 for a 3 metre piece and asked for an invoice. I said no.
The commission was real. 3 metres, smalti and salvaged marble, over the reception desk of a small boutique hotel here in Kalamaria. Two months of work minimum, probably closer to three, plus materials.
2.400 euros.
I said no, and then I spent a week wondering if I was being proud for no good reason. Because that money would have paid the rent for a while, and I am not in a position where 2.400 is nothing. Nobody in my business is.
What killed it was the invoice. They wanted it all declared, clean, taxes paid, which is fair, that is their position. But then you take out EFKA and the tax and what is left is closer to 1.300, and the smalti alone for that size is over 600. So I would have been setting small stones by hand for three months at about the rate of a person who stands at a till. The till at least ends at 3.
The galling part is that nobody there would look at a marble floor and ask for a discount. They know what stone costs. But the hours? The hours are invisible, so they get negotiated.
I am not asking if I was right. I know I was right. I am asking what the rest of you do when the number is insulting but the money is real. Because I don't have a good answer for that yet.
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The invoice is not the problem, it's the diagnosis. If 2.400 only works when it's undeclared, then the real price of the piece was never 2.400, and they were never buying three months of your life, they were buying the fiction that it costs nothing. Which is the same fiction the whole trade runs on here.
I do print, so I know the multiples version of this: someone asks for an edition of 30 and offers you the price of one. Same move. The labour is real, the object is not scarce, so the buyer decides the labour is not real either.
You can say no and still be unsure. Both things can be true. But I don't think you said no out of pride.
The "edition of 30 at the price of one", that one lands. I do cyanotypes, so each print comes out of the sun and water a little different, and I've had people ask for "a series" and then blink when the number doesn't come with a discount for volume. As if the sea works by the metre.
The thing you said about the buyer deciding the labour is not real when the object is not scarce, I think that is exactly it. The invoice is only where it becomes visible. But you are right, both can be true. Saying no and lying awake about it are not contradictions. I am not sure the doubt ever fully goes, honestly. I still have pieces I said no to and still think about the money.
"As if the sea works by the metre." That's the whole thing, isn't it. Cyanotype is worse than mosaic for that argument, honestly, because people can see the variation with their own eyes and they still want the thirty to be identical. Then they don't want the thirty.
And no, the doubt doesn't go. I've decided it doesn't need to. It's just the price of not pretending the number was fine when it wasn't. If you'd said yes, you'd have been lying awake about something worse.
"The invoice is the diagnosis", yes. That is exactly it and I have been trying to say it badly for a week. The invoice did not kill the deal, it just made visible what the deal already was. If it only works in the dark, it is not a price, it is a favour with extra steps. And I am not running a charity with a grout bucket.
The edition of 30 at the price of one is the same disease with better packaging. Your labour is priced per object, so the more objects they want, the cheaper your hands become. Beautiful logic for them.
And yes, both things can be true. I said no and I still check my account and wince.