Making and Marketing Craft in the '90s 1 2 - PRINTER VERSION
>> for both. Craftspeople, if they are going to be successful ‚ and by that I mean find the largest possible audience for their respective work ‚ have to start clarifying their intentions and aims. They have to know who their audience is and develop strategies for getting their work before that audience. Our culture does not expect, for example, the business person to constantly operate at a loss, but accepts that possibility from the artist. It allows for the notion of seconds from a business person, but would find that a contradiction in an artist's work. I believe these two occupations—the maker and marketer—which craftspeople have tried to reconcile as one, are antithetical and that the craftsperson that tries to do both confuses the public about his or her intentions.
The late English potter Michael Cardew whom I first heard talk here at Berea almost twenty years ago and who has had a profound influence on my development as both a writer and a potter, wrote in his book Pioneer Pottery that: "the essential thing is that the potter does not merely follow what his public wants but leads it, so that in the end they want what he wants. He will often have to wait a long time before he is accepted. He makes life hard for himself at first, but later on his public will come to him because in his workshop the potter's art is alive."
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© 1980 - 2025 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
>> for both. Craftspeople, if they are going to be successful ‚ and by that I mean find the largest possible audience for their respective work ‚ have to start clarifying their intentions and aims. They have to know who their audience is and develop strategies for getting their work before that audience. Our culture does not expect, for example, the business person to constantly operate at a loss, but accepts that possibility from the artist. It allows for the notion of seconds from a business person, but would find that a contradiction in an artist's work. I believe these two occupations—the maker and marketer—which craftspeople have tried to reconcile as one, are antithetical and that the craftsperson that tries to do both confuses the public about his or her intentions.
The late English potter Michael Cardew whom I first heard talk here at Berea almost twenty years ago and who has had a profound influence on my development as both a writer and a potter, wrote in his book Pioneer Pottery that: "the essential thing is that the potter does not merely follow what his public wants but leads it, so that in the end they want what he wants. He will often have to wait a long time before he is accepted. He makes life hard for himself at first, but later on his public will come to him because in his workshop the potter's art is alive."
<<
© 1980 - 2025 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign