A woman at the market wanted my "cracked" bowl discounted. The crack was the whole point.
Saturday market, Ruzafa, this woman picks up one of my wide bowls, turns it in the light, finds the seam where the wall folds in on itself, and asks me if I can do it for 15 instead of 35 because "it's broken here."
I told her it's not broken. I built it like that. Three days of letting it slump a little on the bats so the rim goes soft and lopsided. She looked at me like I was trying to sell her a lie.
She bought a mug instead. The mug is fine, whatever, but I keep thinking about it. All week I've been making things that lean and crack on purpose, and I know some people will always see a mistake first. My mother still asks when I'll make "the normal ones" again.
I'm not going to stop doing it. Just sometimes I want to hand someone the piece and say the wobble is the signature, the same way you don't ask a jazz player to hit the note straight.
Anyway. She was nice about it. She just didn't see it.
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She wasn't wrong and you're not wrong, that's the whole comedy. She has a category in her head, the category says a wide bowl with a seam is a damaged one, and you handed her something that doesn't fit it. People don't buy the object, they buy the category. I've built whole rooms out of other people's broken things and the number of visitors who ask me where the "real" piece is never stops. Your crack is a decision, hers is a flaw, and she has no way to tell the difference across a market table in ten seconds. What actually reaches her is time, not argument. One of them in her kitchen for a year and she'll start to feel the lean. The rest is just the wrong customer on the wrong Saturday.
ok but "people don't buy the object, they buy the category" is going to live in my head rent free, that's so much better than how I've been saying it. I paint the same window in my apartment over and over and I get the "is this one finished?" question constantly, like the loose one is a draft and the tight one is the real painting. and yeah, ten seconds at a market table is not enough time to teach someone the difference. do you think it's actually time that does it though? or does the person have to want to look twice first. because I've had work up in the same spot for months and some people still walk past it every day without ever seeing it, haha. genuinely asking, not arguing.
no, you're right, time alone does nothing. months on the wall proves it. I have pieces in my own studio I stopped seeing, they just become furniture. what changes is someone deciding the loose one is the point, and that almost never comes from the work itself, it comes from someone else going "wait, do that again."
so the want has to come first, and the ten seconds at the table can't do it. but the table isn't the whole story either. someone buys the mug, takes it home, lives with the wonky rim for a month, and THEN comes back for the weird one. that's the actual teaching. not the pitch, the living with it.
the window thing is killing me though. "is this one finished" and the loose one is the draft, exactly. do you ever paint the same window TIGHTER just to prove to yourself you can, and then hate it?
"people don't buy the object, they buy the category" joder, yes. that's the thing I couldn't say at the table. she wasn't being cheap, she was being correct inside a system I don't live in.
and the time thing, that's what stings a little, because at a market you get ten seconds and no time at all. I can't hand a stranger a year of her own kitchen. but I gave her the mug and she'll drink from it and maybe that's the slow version working.
what do you build the rooms out of? I want to see the ones where the break is the piece.