Sold a Kohbar for 3,500 after eleven days work. Then did the sum in front of my wife.

The buyer was from Patna, a gentleman who came to the house with his brother. He saw one Kohbar painting, the one with the bamboo grove and the lotus pond, and he liked it very much. I said 3,500 rupees.

He paid without any bargain at all, which should have told me something. Then afterward I did the full sum on paper, because my wife asked me straight how many days it took. Eleven days. Not full days, mind, but mornings and evenings, and the paper and brushes and the natural colours also have cost. The black from soot, the yellow from turmeric, the red I make from kusum flower and it takes one full day just for that grinding.

So when I put the paper cost and the colour making and eleven days together, it came to something like 180 rupees for one day of work.

My wife said nothing. She only looked at me. That was worse than if she had said something.

And still I am not able to raise the price, this is my difficulty. In my area people will say, why so much for a painting on paper, my cousin's daughter also does this. The cooperative also gives a fixed rate which is old rate only. And I am afraid if I say 6,000 then the gentleman will go quietly to somebody else and I will never know.

Now I am thinking to keep one painting aside and not sell it, only to see what price it can get if I wait. Has anybody here done this waiting business successfully? For me patience is there but the house expenses are also there, both things are pulling.

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Roman Petrak·1h

Eleven days and the buyer paid without a word about price. That's not a compliment, that's a signal. A man who doesn't bargain either doesn't know what it cost you or knows exactly and is relieved you didn't. Either way the number you said first is the number you're stuck with.

The materials are the part people never count. Making your own red from kusum, soot black, turmeric yellow, that's hours that don't show up in the painting. I've watched guys price stone work and forget the diamond blades and the wear on their own hands. Price the next one like the materials and the mornings both count. Sounds like you already know that now.

Ramesh JhaOP·4m

You are right ji, and it is the kusum that teaches this lesson hardest. To get even a small pot of that red I am boiling the flowers, straining, drying in the sun, and if the sun is not cooperating then two days go only in that. My wife said the same thing you are saying, that I am selling the painting and giving the labour free with it. The stone work comparison is very apt. A man buying a finished thing never sees the blade that broke.

One thing only I will say in my own defence. In our tradition the price was never fixed by the hours. It was fixed by what the work is for. A Kohbar is made for a marriage, it carries a blessing, and if I start counting it like a shopkeeper then something in it changes. But that thinking is also how we have stayed poor, so I am not fully defending it. I am only saying the two things sit side by side in my head and I have not yet made them agree.

Next one, I will sit with the paper first and put the sum down before the buyer comes. That much I can do.

Tomáš Havel·50m

The eleven days is the part that matters, but I would be careful about which eleven days you count. My first marriage, I counted hours. My second, I counted the years and stopped feeling robbed. The buyer from Patna paid without bargaining, which means one thing only: he had already decided the painting was worth more than 3,500 to him, and he was afraid you would find out. That is not your failure. That is the whole problem of pricing handmade things. You made the black from soot and the red from kusum, and a man in a gallery in Berlin charges five figures for a canvas he did not even stretch himself. Your price is not wrong. It is just priced against a market that does not exist where you live. The question your wife asked is the right one, but the answer is not the sum on paper. It is: what number would make you say no next time? Start there.

Ramesh JhaOP·34m

Your line about the first marriage and the second one, I have been thinking on it since morning. Counting the years, that is not the same as counting the hours, but it is also not stopping the count, no? Somewhere the count is happening, only quietly.

But you are right that I counted the wrong eleven days perhaps. There is also the eleven days my mother sat with me when I was nine, showing how to hold the brush for the line of the bamboo. Those days nobody paid anything and nobody counted them either.

One thing I will say plainly. About the buyer being afraid I would find out the worth, I am not so sure. Here in Madhubani, when a man comes to the house and does not bargain, it is often respect, not fear. He saw the painting hanging in my room and he wanted it in his house. Maybe in Patna it would have gone for fifteen thousand. That part I do not argue. But I would not like to think of him as a cheat, ji. He came with his brother, they drank tea, we talked about the Kohbar and why the bamboo and lotus are there for the bride and groom. That was something also.

The Berlin gallery part, kindly do not get me started. My son showed me once on the phone, a painting of a peacock, very poor peacock, no life in the eye, and the price was more than my whole year. I closed the phone.