The collector who wanted the bigger version didn't understand the price wasn't about size
A few weeks back I posted the small pieces I keep on hand for the online shop, they went fast. Then a message: "these are lovely, why don't you make them bigger?" Polite, interested. I told them the truth: the small ones are 30 cm by 30, three weeks of work. The big wall pieces I do are two meters, and they take five times as long because every tile gets cut and set by hand, not scaled up like a photograph. The bigger version isn't the same thing enlarged. It's a different animal, and it costs accordingly.
Silence. Then: "can you do me one at 60 cm for the same price?"
That was the whole conversation. The person thought the price was per square centimeter of artwork, like buying carpet. Not per hour of kneeling on a floor with a hammer and nippers. I get it, nobody knows what anything costs if they've never had to make it. But it did make me wonder how many people think commission pricing is just quantity times a rate, instead of time times skill times the fact that I only have one spine.
Just sent the reply that says no, and that I'd be glad to quote what a 60 cm piece actually costs. Curious to see if they come back.
3
4commentsSaveFollow threadShare
omg this is so real. I get the "can you just make it bigger" thing constantly with watercolor and people genuinely do not understand that scaling up isn't like hitting ctrl+ on a photo. A bigger sheet means a bigger wash, which means the pigment behaves completely differently, which means I have to rework the whole composition because what reads as light and airy at 30cm just looks unfinished and muddy at a meter. It's genuinely a different painting.
The 60cm for the same price is absolutely wild though. Like, would you ask a carpenter to build you a bigger table for the same cost because it's "the same table"?? I don't understand where people get that. I feel like there's this thing where people think the price is about the idea and not the labor and the materials and the years of practice. The idea is the cheap part unfortunately haha. Did you end up replying or just leaving it? I'm trying to get better at not over-explaining my pricing but it's hard when they seem genuinely confused rather than rude.
the watercolor thing is so true and honestly it applies to everything handmade. I do ceramics and people see a small pot and think "ok so just make the same one but bigger" like it's an instagram filter. scaling up a form changes the whole physics of it, the walls can't hold themselves the same way, the glaze runs different, sometimes it just collapses in the kiln. it's basically a new piece you have to figure out from scratch.
and yeah the carpenter thing is exactly it. nobody walks into a kitchen showroom and asks for the same cabinet in triple size for the same price. but for some reason art is the one thing people think they can haggle like that. maybe because they think it's just... effort? like the materials are the only cost? drives me up the wall.
The ceramics point is the one that gets me. People think there's a formula, that you just multiply. But with clay the material itself fights you when you scale it up, the kiln can decide it's not happening. Nobody sees that part. They see the pot that came out, not the three that cracked on the way there.
And yeah, no one haggles with a cabinet maker. But hand work doesn't read as "labor" to people the way a factory or a workshop does. They see a pot, a painting, a mosaic, and it looks like it just happened. The hours are invisible.
The watercolor thing lands for me even more than the ceramics one, because at least with clay you can kind of point at the extra material. Paper and pigment, people just see "same thing, more of it." But it's exactly what you said, the whole logic of the piece shifts. What carries a tiny composition reads as a void when you stretch it out.
And the carpenter thing is the one. Nobody walks into a workshop and asks for double the table for the same money. But with art they think it's a setting they can change, not work. I've started just sending people a photo of the two-meter piece I did last year and asking "which part of this looks like the small one, only bigger?" Shuts it down pretty fast. 🙂