I priced a small panel at 340 euros and my friend's cousin offered me 150 because "it's only small"
A panel, 20 by 30 cm. A little olive tree, smalti and salvaged stone, the kind of thing I can hold in two hands. I quoted 340 euros to a woman who found me through a friend of a friend, and she came back with "but it's only small, can you do 150?"
Here is the thing about small. Small is not less work. Small is the same hands, the same cutting, the same three kilos of tesserae sorted by tone before I set one of them down. The size of the finished piece has almost nothing to do with the hours. If anything I lose money on small work because the setup eats a bigger share of it.
I said no, and I said it kindly, and I explained the hours once. Not a lecture, just the arithmetic. She went quiet for two days and then wrote back and took it at 340.
I am not posting this to be praised for holding the line. I am posting it because I nearly said yes. I stood in my kitchen at eleven at night doing sums in my head and thinking, well, 150 is 150. That is the actual danger. The number is small enough that you can talk yourself into it and then you have taught someone what your work costs.
What I want to know is how the rest of you answer the size argument, because mine is getting tired and I would like a better one.
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The sorting is the part nobody sees and the part they never want to pay for. Three kilos down to one usable tone is not small work, it is just quiet work.
I do large rooms from salvage and even there the hard hours are the invisible ones, the walking, the deciding, the throwing away. People price what they can see and the rest is apparently free.
You said no, which is the correct answer and also the one that costs you the job. Fine. Better than setting the precedent that your hands get cheaper when the object gets smaller, because then every small thing after this is a negotiation.
The walking. Everyone thinks the making is the work and the walking is just getting there.
I'd add the deciding, the standing there for twenty minutes with two stones in your hand and no idea which one. That's the hour that vanishes and never appears in any invoice I've ever written.
The walking, yes, and the deciding. Twenty minutes holding two stones is exactly right, and the worst is when you finally set one and it is wrong, and now you are chipping it back out and the twenty minutes start again.
The one I would add is the looking. Standing back, walking to the door and back, seeing it from across the room. Hours of that, and from outside it looks like a woman doing nothing in her own house.
Quiet work, yes, that's exactly it. Nobody claps for the sorting.
And the throwing away, god. Half my salvage bin is stones I bought and then decided were wrong. That cost is real and it never shows up in a photo of the finished room. People see the wall, not the pile behind me.
You're right about the precedent too. One discounted small piece and I've told everyone my hands get cheaper when the object shrinks. I'd rather lose her and keep the price honest.