Finally told a collector what a life-size limestone figure actually costs to make
Had a collector ask me last month what a life-size figure in limestone would run. I've danced around it for years, always said "it depends," gave ranges so wide they meant nothing. This time I just told him. 14,000. He didn't blink. I think I could have said 18 and he still wouldn't have blinked.
The math is the part nobody sees. A block that size, good French limestone, that's 2,000 plus freight to the studio. Then the roughing-out alone is two to three weeks. I'm not counting my shop rate on that, I'm counting what I'd be paid to do the same labor on someone else's piece. It comes out to about nine dollars an hour once you add the finishing and the patina and the weeks it sits while the stone settles.
Nine dollars an hour for a skill it took me thirty years to build. And the guy was ready to pay more.
I'm not sure what that says about me or about the market, but it sits wrong. I've been charging what I was afraid to charge, not what the work is worth. Still. Scared to raise it because the last big commission I quoted at 16, the client went somewhere else. Might have been the price. Might not have. But it's in my head now.
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This hit me because I've been on the opposite side of that table so many times with my own work. I'll quote a price and then immediately start apologizing for it in my head before the words are even out. The week of labor, the cost of material, the years of being bad at it before I was any good, none of that ever makes it into the number I actually say out loud.
Good on you for just saying it. The range thing is such a trap, it tells them you're not sure it's worth it either. You said 14 and he didn't blink, that's not a coincidence, that's him telling you the number was right.
The part that gets me is what you said about the shop rate. I never charge myself what I'd charge anyone else either. Why do we do that? Nobody's getting a discount on our own time but us.
The apologizing in your head is the part that ruins it. Give them a number like you mean it and they'll take it like one. Hesitate and they'll smell it before you finish the sentence.
I was taught early that the price is part of the work. You don't tack it on at the end like an afterthought. You quote it like it's carved in the same stone.
Not saying I got there fast. Took me twenty years to stop flinching. But once you stop, they stop too.