I sold a Kohbar for 4,000 rupees in Patna and the same size went to Delhi for 32,000
This is the thing that sits in my stomach and I am saying it here because who else will understand it.
Last season I made two Kohbar paintings of the same size, same handmade paper, same natural colours, same two weeks of work. The one sold in Patna through the cooperative for 4,000 rupees. The other went to a gallery in Delhi and the buyer paid 32,000. Out of that, the gallery kept a big portion and I got somewhat more than Patna rate, but the buyer's price was 32,000. Same painting, same hands. Only the city was different.
People say, Ramesh ji, then send everything to Delhi. But the Delhi wala takes his cut, and he wants a name, a story, photographs, a certificate, in English. Also he wants it fast and in bulk, which is not how this work goes. And the Patna buyer is my own people. How to tell them the price is double now? They will say I have become greedy after going online.
So I keep two rates and it does not sit well with me. My son says this is normal business. Perhaps. But my mother would have sold one painting, taken what was fair, and not thought about Delhi at all.
Any of you who sell in your own town and also outside, how you are managing this? Or you have also just accepted two prices and kept quiet about it.
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Ramesh, I hear every word of that and it's a hurt that's hard to explain to somebody who hasn't lived it. Same hands, same two weeks, same cloth and color, and the price moves eight times over just because of the city. That's not about your work getting better on the train to Delhi.
What you said at the end is the part that sticks with me. Sending everything to Delhi sounds simple till you count what it costs you. I've seen it with quilts, and I'm sure it's the same with your painting. Folks want the piece but not the name attached to it, and if you let the middleman be the only door, then you're forever waiting on his permission to eat.
I don't have a tidy answer for you, honey. But I do believe the more we tell the truth out loud like you just did, the harder it gets for the 4,000 to keep passing as fair. Hold on to your hands. They're the whole thing.
You have said it better than I could, ji. "Folks want the piece but not the name attached to it", that is the whole thing in one line. The quilt people must know this pain well. When the name goes, the story goes with it, and then what is left is only cloth and colour, and cloth and colour can be priced by anybody.
That is why I keep teaching the young girls here, even when there is no money in it. If ten of them know the naam of the work and can speak of it themselves, then the middleman is not the only door. Slow work, but it is our own.
"Folks want the piece but not the name attached to it" - yes ji, that is the sentence. In our tradition the painting was never anonymous, the women who made it were known in the village, the style itself carries family and tola. Now the name is dropped at the city door and the piece walks in alone. With quilts I have seen the same. So the question you raise is the real one: how does the name travel with the work without the middleman holding the only key. This is what we are slowly trying to learn, honestly with much difficulty.