Did the math on my market stall prints and it works out to about €2.80 an hour

Did the accounts for the last market season over a cup of tea this morning, the way you do, and I nearly spat it out.

Sold 240 prints over eight Saturdays, which sounds great till you add up the fine: about €4,600 in, and then the stall fee, the petrol, the framing offcuts, the lino and ink and paper and the new gouges I had to buy because the old ones went blunt halfway through July. Net came out around €900 for the season. That's not a business, that's a very slow hobby with a stronger opinion of itself.

But here's the thing I keep coming back to. I met a woman at the October market who bought one print of the heron and then came back the next Saturday with her daughter and bought another one the same, "one for each of them" she said. That's not in the accounts. And I sold one to an American lad who sent me a photo of it framed above his fireplace in Chicago, which is mad when you think the lino block it came from has a coffee ring on it from the Tuesday before.

I know the whole thing should be priced better and I know the answer is I'm a coward with my own numbers. But I also know I'd still do the eight Saturdays for less than minimum wage, and I'm not sure whether to be proud of that or embarrassed by it. Maybe both.

Anyone else ever run the numbers and then decided not to learn anything from them? 🙂

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Gloria Mae Jackson·2h

That €2.80 an hour hit me, honey, because I know that number. I've spent my whole life making quilts folks would've paid a fortune for if they'd known the hours, and I gave most of them away to weddings and babies and church fundraisers. The math never worked and I did it anyway, because the making isn't about the money.

But here's where I land, and it took me years to get here: that's not the same as letting folks steal your time. You got to know the difference between a labor of love and a labor folks expect for free. The woman at the October market, whatever she said, that's the part that matters. Those prints cost you more than you'll ever get back, and that's a shame. But the one who sees the work for what it is, she's the one worth keeping.

Don't quit over the numbers. Just get a little pickier about who gets the good ones.

Niall DohertyOP·2h

Ah now, you've said it better than I managed in my whole long-winded post. The quilts though. Give me away to weddings and babies and fundraisers, that's exactly the same trap I'm in with the hares. Someone says "oh could you do me a little one for the mammy's birthday" and sure the lino's out and I'm carving away at midnight, delighted with myself, and not once does the word money pass either one of us.

The distinction you've drawn there, labour of love versus labour folks expect for free, that's the bit I'm still thick about. I'm grand at the first, useless at spotting the second till I'm three weeks in. That October woman, she did me a favour actually, stood there at my stall and told me straight that my prints were too cheap and I was doing myself down. First person in about ten years to say it to my face instead of just buying one and being nice about it.

Did I listen? Did I hell. I offered her a discount. 🤦

I'm taking your words down to the studio with me anyway. Someone's got to draw the line and it's not going to be the woman at the market, she tried her best.

Lukas Brandt·2h

That hourly rate is familiar to me in a way I don't love. People see a finished print or a painting and they have no idea what's underneath it. The two hours of selling is the only part they can see, not the nine hours of cutting and inking and proofing before that.

But I've learned not to do that math too cleanly. If I accounted for every hour I've ever put into learning, I'd have a number that would put me off getting up in the morning. The work carries value that the market never prices correctly, and it's a choice whether that makes you bitter or just clears your head about why you actually do it.

Curious what the October story was. Those moments are the part of the stall fee I'd pay twice.

Niall DohertyOP·2h

Ah now that's the whole thing, isn't it. Nobody walks into a market and sees the ten failed proofs or the lino you wrecked on a Tuesday night when the gouge slipped. They just see the hare sitting there looking grand and they hand over a twenty and off they go, delighted with themselves. And fair play to them, they should be.

But you're dead right about not doing that math too cleanly. The first time I stood at a stall and someone said "how long did that take" I nearly made a joke about it being three decades and two bad winters. And then I realised that's actually the true answer, and there's no price for that that wouldn't sound mad out loud.

The learning hours are spent money, is how I've come to see it. You don't get them back, but you also don't have to do them again. There's a bit of comfort in that, anyway. The bitterness is a choice, sure, but so is the other yoke. I'd rather be the fella with the sharp gouge and the clear head. 🙂