Charged 400 for a commission off my brother's jacket and now I can't make another one

A woman saw a piece in a group show last spring, one of the ones built around my brother's jacket. Wanted something in the same family, same size, roughly 40x50cm, paper and wash and a bit of the lining stitched in.

I said 400. Just said it, out loud, before I'd thought about it, because she was standing right there and the number came out and then it was a commitment.

Materials were maybe 60. The rest was eleven weeks of evenings. And the real problem isn't the 400, it's that I can't make a second one. Not that I won't. I can't. The first one used the only piece of that jacket I had left and I knew that when I said yes.

So I took the money for a thing that doesn't exist twice, and I've been sitting on the deposit since March trying to figure out how to tell her. I keep drafting the email and it comes out either cold and businesslike or way oversharing, and both of those are worse than just saying it.

The part that stings is that I priced it like it was a print. Same flat number you'd give for something you can run again. I don't have a formula for the ones that can't be remade, and I suspect a formula would be a lie anyway.

Anyone else quote before their brain caught up? Or taken a deposit for something that turned out to be the last one.

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6 comments

Ramesh Jha·4h

Brother, the 400 is one matter, but the real thing you are saying is that the jacket is finished. That piece cannot be made again because the material itself is gone, and that is not a pricing problem at all. In our work also, some things are made once only. My mother had one old sari of her own mother, and when that was cut and used, no second one was possible, no matter what anyone offered. So please do not carry the guilt of the second one. It was never there to make.

One thing I would say with respect, and only if it is useful to you. When a buyer asks for something "in the same family," it is better to tell them plainly that the family can be continued but that exact piece cannot be repeated, because the cloth was a single one. People accept this more than we fear, and the work keeps its honesty. Eleven weeks of evenings for 400, with 60 in materials, that is the part which needs correcting for the next person who comes. But that is a lesson, not a fault.

The jacket of your brother, that is now living inside a piece of work. That is not a small thing, ji. My respect to you.

Inês Costa·3h

"In the same family" is the part I would hold carefully too. It sounds like a small ask, but it is actually a request for something that cannot exist, because what she saw was not a design, it was a particular piece of cloth meeting light once.

I work in cyanotype, camera-less, and people ask for "another like the one with the net." There is no other one. The paper, the sun that day, the seawater, all of it was a single event. I have learned to say yes to the feeling and no to the object. I can make something that stands beside it, but I cannot make its twin, and I say so before the money, not after.

Your brother's jacket is not a style. It is a fact. You are right to protect it.

Mira VeyOP·2h

"yes to the feeling, no to the object" is going straight in my head, thank you for that. the seawater one gets me. i keep thinking the difference is that you at least watched the sun do it once, so you know exactly what you lost. i only had the one lining panel and i didn't know it was the last one until it was already stitched down.

did saying no before the money ever cost you the sale? part of me wants to start doing it that way and part of me is scared i'll just watch people walk.

Mira VeyOP·3h

the sari thing stopped me. that's the part nobody outside this gets, that once the cloth is cut it's not a material shortage, it's just gone. no amount of money unsays it.

and yeah, you're right that the guilt is misplaced. i keep catching myself treating it like a failure of planning instead of just a fact.

the "same family" part, you cut off before the useful bit. i want to hear it, because i've been saying yes to that phrasing for a year now and it's starting to cost me.

Ananya Iyer·4h

The 400 is almost beside the point here, though I know it doesn't feel that way at two in the morning. What you've described is the thing about commission work that nobody prices in properly: the piece that made her want it was made once, from material that only existed once. There's no quote for that, because it isn't really a product.

I've sketched a lot of old houses in Bangalore that are gone now. People sometimes ask if I'll do "the same one" and I have to explain that the building has been demolished, so all I have is the drawing. It's a strange thing to say out loud, that the reference itself is finished. Sounds like your brother's jacket is that for you.

If she's reasonable, telling her straight might land better than you fear. Not an apology, just the fact of it, the one piece of lining is gone, the piece was made for that material. The people who genuinely love the first one usually understand. And if she doesn't, that tells you something too. Do you have anything else of his you could work from, or did that jacket really take the last of it?

Mira VeyOP·3h

the demolished house thing. yeah. i keep trying to explain it as "i ran out of jacket" and that's not it at all, it's that there's no second one hiding anywhere. people hear "ran out" and think wait a few months, find more.

did you ever get pushed on it? like someone offering real money for "the same one" of a house that's a parking lot now. i never know what to do with that face they make.