Search

Sold a small piece at the flea market on saturday. Lady asked what the torn paper was about, and I told her it was from my brother's old notebooks. She bought it before I even finished the sentence. No reel, no hashtag, no "link in bio." Just me standing there with cold coffee and my actual story. Meanwhile I've got 40 something posts on instagram this month, maybe three genuine interactions. Someone called the same kind of piece "cluttered" in a review a while back and I've been second-guessing the layering ever since. The lady at the market didn't care about composition rules. She wanted to know whose stuff it was. I keep thinking the market is the hobby and the feed is the real thing. It's backwards. The market is the only place people actually look at the work with their eyes and take it home. The feed is just me performing being an artist for strangers who scroll past. Don't really know what to do with that besides keep hauling the tent on saturdays.

There's a Saturday market in Galway I've been doing on and off for maybe twelve years. Rain, hail, the odd glorious day where everyone's in great form. And I used to think the point of it was to shift prints, which it is, but the real thing it taught me is how to talk to people about what you make without sounding like you're selling. You get all sorts at a stall. The tourist who wants something that says Ireland without being a leprechaun on a toilet. The local who stops because they recognise the pier or the mountain. The person who clearly loves the work but hasn't got thirty quid and stands there turning a card over in their hands. And you learn, quick, that the ones who buy aren't the ones you try to convince. They're the ones you just talk to, normally, about the carving or the ink or the hare that lives in the field behind your house and won't let you get near it. The thing that stuck with me is this: I've never sold a print by telling someone how good it is. I've sold plenty by telling them the story of the night I carved it and nearly took the tip of my finger off, or how the block got dropped in a puddle and the crack became part of the print. People want the thing behind the thing. They don't want a pitch. Anyway. The market's grand for that. But online, I still catch myself trying to sound like a proper business instead of just a fella in a jumper with ink under his nails. And the minute I do that, engagement drops off a cliff. The posts that work are always the ones where I forget I'm supposed to be marketing and just talk about what happened today. Sure I don't know where I'm going with this except that the best marketing advice I ever got was from a woman buying a print of a heron who said "just tell me why you made it" and walked away with two.

Was at the market in Galway on Saturday, the one by the Spanish Arch, and a woman bought one of the hares off me for 60 euro. Handy, she was delighted, I was delighted, she went off with it under her arm. Then I got home, kids in bed, and I did the sums on that particular block because I'd been putting it off. Lino board, ink, the good paper, that's about 11 euro a print when I'm doing a run. Fine. But that block itself, from the first sketch to the last proof, was the guts of two weeks of evenings. Not two weeks of solid days, I'm not pretending that, but two weeks of the hours I actually have after the small lad is down and the older one has stopped asking me questions about dinosaurs. So call it 25 hours. 60 minus 11 is 49. 49 into 25 hours is just under two euro an hour, and that's before I count the fact that I carved the thing four times over because the first three were wrong. The mad part is I'd sell it again tomorrow at 60 because it's the market and people have a tenner in their hand and there's a ceiling on what a stranger will part with at a stall. What I'm realising is the 60 isn't the problem. The problem is I'm putting the two-week blocks on the market table at all, and keeping the ones I actually need to charge properly for on the shelf in the studio where only people who've already decided they want one will ever see them.

So I did a little market in this old garage space in El Cabanyal last weekend. Thought it'd be quiet, maybe sell a few small pieces, cover the table fee. I brought a box of seconds, things with cracks, glaze drips, a little jug that leaned so far it looked drunk. I almost didn't unpack them. Put them at the edge of the table for 10€ each, basically clay cost. They went first. People loved them more than the "good" pieces. One woman said the crack in a little cup looked like a lightning bolt and she wanted to drink her morning coffee from it. I had to stop myself from explaining it was a kiln failure. Meanwhile on Etsy I'm fighting the algorithm, paying for ads, packing things in bubble wrap like a warehouse robot. And I made more in four hours sitting in a chair drinking terrible coffee from a thermos, telling people yes that cup is supposed to look like that. I'm not saying markets are the answer for everyone. But I'm starting to think the friction of selling online is getting ridiculous for small makers. You spend more time managing the store than making the thing. At the market you just... show up. Talk to people. Hand them a wonky cup and they love it. Maybe the real hack is just lowering your standards and letting people see the ugly ones lol

Genuinely still annoyed about this. I've an edition of 40 of the hare, the one leaning into the wind with the ears back, black on cream Zerkall. Small, about A5. Hand pulled, all of them a bit different at the edges, which is half the point of the thing. I had it at 35 for the Saturday market in the square, sold nine in an afternoon, felt like a proper printer for once. So I thought right, that's the market telling me something, and I put it at 45 for the next one. Sold one. To my wife's cousin, and I'm fairly sure she was being decent. Same print. Same paper. Same hands. Two weeks apart. And I've gone back and forth on it since like an eejit, wondering was it the rain, was it that the other stall had the coffee, or did I just get the crowd that day and the price had nothing to do with it at all. Head melted. The thing that nags me isn't the money, it's that I still don't know what the print is worth, and I've been doing this long enough that I feel like I should. Forty euro? Fifty? I've a notion that 35 was me pricing it for people I like rather than pricing the work. Anyway I'm back at 35 for the next one because I'd rather shift them than sit looking at a box of hares in the spare room. If anyone else has done the thing where you put the price up and it goes quiet and you can't tell if the price did it or the day did it, I'd love to hear it, because I'm starting to think you can never actually know.

Seven years I did the Christmas markets circuit around Galway, and sure I loved the craic of it, the whole gang of us makers propping each other up over cold tea at half nine. But I started doing the sums on it last year and the amount of hours I was standing on my feet to shift maybe thirty prints at a tenner margin each... you'd get more per hour stacking shelves in Tesco. So I pulled out of the big one this winter. No table, no fairy lights, no man trying to haggle me down to a fiver for something that took me two days to carve. What I did instead was dead boring. I printed a plain little catalogue, four pages, black and white, every piece photographed flat on the kitchen table with the kids' homework shoved out of frame, and I posted the damn thing to about forty people who've bought off me before or who run the small galleries I've dealt with. Old school. Envelopes and stamps, like a man posting letters to his granny. And it worked. Sold twenty-three prints before December even got going. People wrote back, some of them just to say they liked the look of the hare on page two, no purchase, and that's grand too. The gallery in Westport took twelve on the strength of a paper catalogue and a phone call. I'm not saying markets are dead. I'm saying I was so busy performing the selling I forgot the actual selling. Nobody wants to scroll you at a draughty hall in November when they can sit in their own kitchen and pick what they genuinely like off a table of your work. Turns out the thing that worked was the most old-fashioned thing I could have done, and my phone never once told me how many people saw it.

Did the accounts for the last market season over a cup of tea this morning, the way you do, and I nearly spat it out. Sold 240 prints over eight Saturdays, which sounds great till you add up the fine: about €4,600 in, and then the stall fee, the petrol, the framing offcuts, the lino and ink and paper and the new gouges I had to buy because the old ones went blunt halfway through July. Net came out around €900 for the season. That's not a business, that's a very slow hobby with a stronger opinion of itself. But here's the thing I keep coming back to. I met a woman at the October market who bought one print of the heron and then came back the next Saturday with her daughter and bought another one the same, "one for each of them" she said. That's not in the accounts. And I sold one to an American lad who sent me a photo of it framed above his fireplace in Chicago, which is mad when you think the lino block it came from has a coffee ring on it from the Tuesday before. I know the whole thing should be priced better and I know the answer is I'm a coward with my own numbers. But I also know I'd still do the eight Saturdays for less than minimum wage, and I'm not sure whether to be proud of that or embarrassed by it. Maybe both. Anyone else ever run the numbers and then decided not to learn anything from them? 🙂

I do the Saturday market in town maybe twice a month, rest of the time it's online. And every time I come back from the market I look at the Instagram numbers and just laugh. At the stall, I can put out ten different prints, hares, herons, the round tower at Kilmacduagh, a new linocut of the Claddagh at low tide, and watch people pick things up and put them down. And what sells is never what I think will sell. Never. The one I carved in two hours on a whim because I was bored? Gone in the first hour. The one I spent three weeks on, re-carved twice, perfect registration? Sits there like a nun at a wedding. Last month a woman bought the scrappy little print of a jackdaw I nearly didn't bring. She said it looked like the ones that raid her bins at home. And I'm sitting there thinking, I can't algorithmically optimise for "reminds you of a bin-raiding jackdaw." The real numbers I trust are: did someone laugh, did someone say "that's himself exactly," did someone pull out a crumpled twenty from their back pocket. The rest of it feels like astrology for people who make things.

Sold the last of a hare edition at a market in Kinvara on Saturday and I'm still annoyed about it, and not in the way you'd think. I priced them at €25. Hand-carved, hand-pulled, six weeks of an evenings' work in the block before a single one of them existed. And they went, grand, they went fast, and that's the problem. Fella bought two, told me I was "very reasonable," and I could feel the whole stall behind me wince. Here's the thing I keep doing and I know I keep doing it: I price for the person I'm afraid of. The one who'd look at a print and go "sure I could get a poster for a fiver." I never meet that person. The people who actually buy are the ones who want the thing that took six weeks, and the low price is telling them something about it that isn't true. The ones I've had at €45 sat there a bit longer and then sold to someone who looked at the back of them and asked how the block was cut. Different conversation entirely. Better one. I'm not going to pretend I've solved it. Next market I'll probably do the same thing again because a bad day with nothing sold is worse than a bad price. But I've a hedgerow block on the press at the moment and I've decided that one starts at €45 and I'll sit on my hands. Anyway. If you're a maker, what's the number you're afraid to say out loud? Mine was 45 for a long time and it's a stupid thing to be afraid of.

Kronan flea market on Saturday, a shoebox of paper for 40 kronor. Someone's whole household accounts, 1952 to 1961. Milk, thread, shoe repair, one for a lampshade. Handwriting gets worse every year, which I find comforting. I bought it for the paper. Good weight, that tobacco-yellow, foxed at the edges. But now the box is on the studio floor and I keep reading them and I can't cut them up. A receipt for 2.50 for shoe repair is not interesting. That's the problem. It's completely not interesting and I've read it four times. Meanwhile my actual piece has been stuck for two weeks because I can't find the right piece for the lower left. Sorted through everything. Twice. I think the receipts stay. The piece can wait.

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.

okay so I emailed a gallery a few months back with a little portfolio, and they actually got back to me (!) and wanted to meet. I was so excited. Then the owner spent the whole meeting talking about "the market" and what "sells in this area" and finally asked if I could, quote, "brighten up my palette a little" because watercolor in muted tones reads "sad" apparently. I didn't walk. I should've walked. I did a whole sample piece in bright happy colors and she never even replied after that. 😭 honestly kind of glad but also what a waste of a weekend. so what's the red flag you saw on the way in and ignored anyway? or the one that made you turn around immediately? I feel like we all have at least one of these.

Sat at the market in Ruzafa on Sunday with about thirty pieces and the small bowls were 45. Sold eleven of them. Felt like a great day until I did the actual math in the van. Clay, glaze, two firings, my table fee, the hours. Works out around 3 euros an hour and that's if I don't count the ones that cracked. Which I always don't count. Funny how the cracked ones disappear from the spreadsheet. The thing is people pick up a bowl, turn it in their hands, and 45 feels like the right number to them. And I keep agreeing with them because saying 70 out loud makes me feel like I'm taking the piss. My grandmother asked what I sold and when I told her the price she just looked at me and said "y eso?" and went back to her coffee. She's not wrong. I know the answer is raise the price. I've known it for a year. I'm just scared that at 70 nobody picks it up and then I have thirty bowls and no money and proof that I'm not as good as I think. Which is a stupid reason, I know. But there it is. Curious if anyone here actually made the jump and what happened, because I keep circling it.

Three weekends ago I paid 60 for a table at a flea market out past the highway. Two folding chairs, no tent, sun in my eyes until noon. Sold 210. Two small pieces and a stack of prints. If I count the hours and the framing I lost money. Badly. But here's the thing nobody says in the pricing threads. I got four conversations that mattered more than the sales. A woman stood in front of one piece for probably ten minutes and then told me about her mother's house, which is the whole reason I make anything. Another guy took my card and emailed me Tuesday, wants to see the bigger work. That's not a lead from a reel, that's a person who touched the actual surface. Online I get 40 likes and nothing. In person I get one person who really looks. The part that stings is that it's not scalable. I can't do this every weekend, my back won't take it and it eats the studio time. I keep looking for a version of this that lives on a screen and I can't find one. Everything that actually reaches somebody seems to cost me a Saturday and a sunburn. Anyway I'm doing it again next month. If you've done the table thing, what actually sells for you, prints or the real stuff. I haven't figured out the ratio and I'm pricing blind.

Saturday market, Ruzafa, this woman picks up one of my wide bowls, turns it in the light, finds the seam where the wall folds in on itself, and asks me if I can do it for 15 instead of 35 because "it's broken here." I told her it's not broken. I built it like that. Three days of letting it slump a little on the bats so the rim goes soft and lopsided. She looked at me like I was trying to sell her a lie. She bought a mug instead. The mug is fine, whatever, but I keep thinking about it. All week I've been making things that lean and crack on purpose, and I know some people will always see a mistake first. My mother still asks when I'll make "the normal ones" again. I'm not going to stop doing it. Just sometimes I want to hand someone the piece and say the wobble is the signature, the same way you don't ask a jazz player to hit the note straight. Anyway. She was nice about it. She just didn't see it.

A fella came up to me at the Saturday market in Galway, couple of months back. Wanted a heron, A4 size, framed, for his mother's 80th. Lovely fella, genuinely, stood there chatting for twenty minutes while I was trying to pack down. I was feeling generous, the sun was out, I said I'd do it for €180 framed and he near bit my hand off. Anyway. Carving took me the guts of three days. Proofing, a couple of plates I wasn't happy with and started again. The frame was €45 alone because the cheap ones looked like muck. Felt matting, the board, ink, the blades I went through. Add it up and I reckon I made somewhere around €9 an hour on the carve itself, and that's before you count the drive to the framing shop and back twice because I measured wrong the first time. And the man's mother cried when she saw it, apparently. Which is lovely. It genuinely is. But I've been doing this twenty years and I still price from the gut instead of the shop floor and I'm raging at myself about it. €9 an hour for work that's better than that. Where's the line between the joy of a person loving your thing and you just being a cheap date? Asking for a friend. Actually no, asking for me, because I clearly can't be trusted with the arithmetic.

Bit of a mad one Saturday. I do the market in Galway most weeks, stall of prints, hares and herons and the odd bit of bog. Usually I'm lucky to shift four or five and I'm grand with that, it's more about the chat than the till. Anyway a woman came back for the third time in about an hour. Kept circling the big one, the heron in the reeds, the one that took me three blocks to get right because the legs kept coming out like stilts on a stork. Third visit she just says she'll take it. Framed, cash, no haggling, and I wrapped it in the good paper I keep for that and off she went under her arm in the rain. Here's the thing though. I went to take it off the wall and there was this clean pale rectangle where it had been hanging, and I got a bit of a pang off it. All winter looking at that thing every Saturday and now there's just a bare patch of hessian. Got home and the small fella asked had I sold "the bird" and when I said yes he goes "so you don't have it anymore" and looked at me like I'd lost something. Which I suppose I did. The whole point is to sell them, that's the job, ink and paper and a few pound for the coal. But there's a difference between knowing a print is out in the world somewhere and standing in front of the empty nail it used to be on. Anyway the woman was delighted, she said her mother had one of my hares years ago at a fair in Spiddal, so it's gone to a good home. Still. Weird aul feeling all the same.

The Instagram crowd has gone very quiet the last few weeks. Likes are down, new follows are a trickle, and sure, part of me checks it more than I'd like to admit. But here's the thing I keep coming back to: I sold eleven prints at the market on Saturday. Eleven, cash in a tin, most of them to people who'd never seen my page at all. They just stopped at the stall, picked up the hare, had a chat about it. I see all these posts about algorithms and growth hacks and I'm not saying they're wrong, exactly. But there's a version of this job where the internet is the whole conversation and the person with the money is somewhere in the middle of it, and I think we've all got that backwards a bit. The algorithm doesn't buy prints. It doesn't frame one and hang it in the hallway. Not a big take. Just noticing that I spent the week fretting about a number that doesn't pay the rent, while the actual paying customers were at the end of a table with a till roll and two cups of tea. Anyway. Back to carving. The dog's had enough of me staring at my phone.

Did the Christmas market circuit again this year, first time since before the lockdowns, and I forgot how much you learn from standing behind a table for eight hours. Two years of posting online, chasing the algorithm, reels and carousels and all of it. And then one Saturday in Galway an aul wan picks up a print, holds it at arm's length, squints, and says "that's nice, is it from a photograph?" and I'm explaining linocut to her and she buys it and tells me her mother had a hare in the kitchen. That's the whole job. That exchange. Can't get it from a screen. The thing I'd forgotten is how much the actual conversation sells. People don't buy prints standing in a cold hall, they buy the story you tell them about the block and the carving and the bad weather that put the heron in it. I sold more from the table in one day than a month of good posts. Not because the posts are wrong, but because there's no substitute for a body in front of the work. Still, the online crowd is what finds you the gallery people and the commissions. So it's not either/or. But sure, there's a reason I keep the stall. It's the only place the work gets a real reaction instead of a like.

was set up at the little sunday market in russafa, selling some of my smaller pieces, little jugs, a couple of those face vessels i've been working on, some bowls with this turquoise glaze i finally got right after like six fails. and this guy walks up, picks up one of the face vessels, turns it over in his hands for a while. and he goes "so, this is 3D printed, right? the texture's very uniform." joder. i wanted to hand him a ball of clay and say "here, try making a face with your bare hands, see if it comes out uniform." but i just laughed and said no, it's hand-built, you can see the fingerprints if you look. and he goes "oh, so you designed the file and printed it and then painted it?" i told him the only file involved is the one i'm gonna use to file down my patience after this conversation. he did not buy anything.