Hello there, old friends. The combination of a gimpy computer and a hectic holiday season has conspired to keep me from any posting lately. I hope that you enjoyed seeing photos of John and Yoko and Allen Green in the meantime.
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| A nice teapot group. |
We had a stellar December at LibertyTown and our best year yet, but it comes at a price for me and the staff in long hard days. The pace has been relentless since September when I returned from England… I’d barely looked at the pots from the firing and it was time for Christmas business. I spent a couple of weeks alternating my evening chores from taking photos one night to making and freezing cookie dough the next.
I’ve sold many of the best, but there are still plenty of good pots available and I just might get a little online sale together soon. Most of the birds (except for the 3 biggest) sold in a 24 hour period! I’ve never seen anything like it…still trying to figure out what it all means to a mug maker such as myself, but it’s exciting to see the strong response (I can’t help feeling that I missed the price…did they sell too fast I ask myself…?!)
I made a few more birds which I fired in the electric kiln at LTown, using the glazes there. I wanted to give a few as gifts and it was odd to work in such unfamiliar waters. I’d been thinking that I needed to expand my palette so this was a good opportunity to see them with more color. Some were pretty cool; one looked like it belonged in a Hallmark store at Easter time! I’ll post a photo another day.
There’s plenty more to tell…my conversation with tourism/economic development employees from the city about LibertyTown’s future, the arrival of my new assistant, Jason Hartsoe, from North Carolina, my plans for a gas fired salt kiln and my response to John Bauman’s blog about mugs from a week ago or so. Don’t touch that dial…I’ll be back after these messages from our sponsors.
There must be some ethernet sychronicity between our computers. My old faithful desktop died over the holidays in an act of high tech solidarity with yours.
I’ve got a guy (<--channeling Katy Perry there). No, I mean I gotta tech guy — repairs and builds my computers. When mine died, Tony (the guy) quickly came to my rescue and artificially respirated my hard drive into a used computer so I could service Etsy orders. Then he built me a new computer and brought it over.
I’m up and running, but things look different. Where’d I put those commas? …and that exclamation mark? …and my files! …where are my files?
never mind. I found them.
Anyway, the table of teapots looks great. I want to pick ’em up, lift their lids, etc.
I’m not surprised the birds sold so quickly. They are the single coolest thing I’ve seen in ceramics all year. Seriously.
The pricing question has me champing at the bit (my good friend, Bill, an editor with a major newspaper, assures me that it is, indeed “champing”, and that “chomping” should stay where it belongs in Tony Joe White’s “Poke Salad Annie” lyric)
I interrupeted myself again, didn’t I?
…pricing. You’ve opened a can of worms. I’ve asked myself many times after selling something (somethings) seemingly too fast. But I’ve concluded (sometimes to my satisfaction….then other times, realizing it is I who came up with the thought, considering the source) that what matters isn’t how fast it sells. Selling it/them was the goal, and fast is good*. What matters is if the pricing structure, coupled with my capacity to produce enough of them, equals the amount of money I need to make in a year. And can I sustain that?
Oops. This is your blog, not mine, right? Heh. Maybe I ought save my long-windedness for my own, eh?
*good because of buzz. Buzz is incredibly important.
Good to hear that the season was profitable for LT. 🙂 Happy New Year.
Good to hear you’re selling well.
Pot sales are a bit thin here.
I suppose you could call it the W*lmart effect! (Asda here now is part of them)
The attitude towards Real crafts/food is improving here but slowly. It is still “as cheap as you can get and preferably plastic” (including the food!!)