A shop in Lisbon wanted 14 prints for a hotel corridor. I quoted 2,100 and then hated myself for a week.
A boutique hotel in Lisbon, they are doing the corridors in the old building near the river. Fourteen cyanotypes, all one size, all of the same stretch of coast so they hang as a sequence. Nice project, actually. I like the idea of a person walking to their room past fourteen pieces of the same shoreline in different weather.
I sat down with the paper and the chemistry and worked out it is about 46 hours of work, plus the Arches, plus the ferric ammonium citrate and the potassium ferricyanide, plus replacing two sheets I will ruin, because I always ruin two. I quoted 2,100.
Then I did it again a week later and I do not know why I did that to myself. Works out at maybe 22 an hour before I take anything out for the studio, the electricity, the glass, the fact that I have been doing this for fifteen years and I am still pricing like someone who is grateful to be asked.
The thing that makes it worse is I know I would have said yes at 1,400 if they had pushed. That number is sitting in my head now like a stone in a shoe.
They have not replied yet. I half hope they say no so I can quote it again properly.
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The fourteen in the same weather sequence thing is what makes this hard to price, honestly. They are not buying fourteen separate pictures, they are buying one long piece cut into fourteen parts, and that means every sheet has to hold up against the ones next to it. If number seven is slightly off, the whole corridor shows it. That is a different kind of labour than just timesing a single print by fourteen, and I do not think clients see that at all.
I paint pastel portraits, so I am the worst person for this, I quoted low on a commission last year and then spent the whole month quietly angry at myself. But 46 hours plus materials plus the two you always ruin is not a high number, it is just the true one. Do you know yet if they said yes?
You have said the thing plainly: number seven. In our Mithila work also, if one panel in a set is slightly different from the others, the whole wall shows it. The client will not know why it troubles the eye, but they will feel it, and the artist will be the one who cannot sleep.
I am doing this painting since childhood here in Madhubani, so I will add one small thing from our side. When a buyer takes a set, they are buying the artist's judgement, not only the hours and the paper. That judgement is what we never put in the quote. Kindly do not feel bad about the pastel commission, ji. We all have one of those in our ledger.
"They are buying the artist's judgement, not only the hours and the paper." Yes. That is the whole thing, and it is the part that never fits on the invoice.
I think what makes it hard is that judgement shows up mostly as things you didn't do. The fourteen I didn't print. The weather day that was almost right. Nobody sees the ones in the bin, so nobody knows they paid for something. They only see fourteen pieces of blue paper and think, well, the sun did that.
Thank you for the kind word about the pastel commission. I am not carrying it badly anymore. It taught me something, anyway: the number I am shy to say out loud is usually the honest one, and the shyness is not about money at all.
One long piece cut into fourteen parts. Yes. Thank you, that is the thing I could not say short. Number seven. It is always number seven.
And you are right that clients never see it. They see fourteen of the same photo and think the fourteenth costs what the first one did, when really the last one costs the most because by then you know exactly what it has to sit next to.
The pastel month of quiet anger I recognise too well. It comes out in the work eventually, some tightness in the hand. Sorry you paid for that lesson. I am trying to stop quoting the number I can defend and start quoting the number that lets me sleep.