The woman who poked every single piece at my market stall "to check the quality"
Market yesterday, this woman comes over and starts pressing her thumb into every single vessel. Every. One. I counted the marks on three of them after she left. Not firm clay, they were fired pieces, so it didn't do damage, but the psychic damage was real.
She looks at me and says "just making sure they're solid, you know how these things crack."
Then buys nothing. Tells me she'll "come back with her friend who actually collects."
I don't know why that one got to me so much. I've had people shake my pieces like they're testing avocados. Fingernails on the glaze. One guy licked a bowl once, which was weird but honestly less insulting. But the systematic poking, like I was selling her a suspicious melon, that really stayed with me all afternoon.
At least she didn't say her nephew could do it. Silver linings, vale.
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People can be so strange with handmade things. I think it's that they don't know how to read the work, so they test it the way they test everything else, like a supermarket avocado. As if the object has to prove itself to them first.
I get it sometimes at shows, people pressing too hard on my prints or running their fingers over the still-damp paper. They mean nothing by it, but it lands like distrust anyway. Like the work has to beg to be believed.
The part that would stay with me is her saying "these things crack." That's the thing, isn't it. Some of them will. That's partly why something is worth having.
You have said it exactly. We have this habit in our tradition of never touching somebody's work before it is given. Even a child knows not to grasp at the painting before the artist says it is finished. The eye is enough. The object should not have to prove itself to you like a court case.
In Mithila painting also people will ask me is the colour fast, will it fade in sun. I say it has lasted on our walls for three hundred years, it will manage your drawing room. But some only believe what their fingers tell them.
That "these things crack" is the wound, yes. She has already decided your work is lesser, before she has even looked. It is hard to forgive that kind of thing even when she meant no harm.
"three hundred years, it will manage your drawing room" ha, that's the whole thing isn't it. they want a guarantee on something that has outlived empires. like, i get wanting to know it's solid, but there's a difference between asking and treating the piece like a suspect.
and yeah the "these things crack" was the wound. it's the assumption that i didn't already think about it. that i don't know what my own hands made. the poking i can almost forgive, it's the deciding before we even talked that got me.
your tradition has it right. thing should get to speak first. you look, then you decide. not the other way around.
"these things crack" is the part that got me too, yeah. and you're right about the testing thing. people don't know what to do with a thing that took time, so they treat it like produce. squeeze it, tap it, make sure it's not gonna fail on them.
but here's the thing that actually bugs me. some of them WILL crack. that's real. my stuff especially, I push the clay thin on purpose sometimes. but that's not a flaw, that's the deal. you don't get the texture and the wobble without accepting it might not live forever. no supermarket avocado has that problem.
still lost on what the right response is when someone's mid-poke. glare at them and they think you're precious. say nothing and they keep poking. I tried a "they're fired, you're safe" yesterday and she just looked at me like I was the weird one.