Before even tasting, I grind black pepper over light colored food and
shake salt on dark food and so I consume a lot of peppercorns. Lori
bought me a new (to me) product; a small bottle of peppercorns with an
integral plastic grinder on top. It's the same price as other brands
that lack a grinder and so far it really works and looks good enough for
our everyday table.

I suppose we turners pay much more than she did for quality pepper mill
mechanisms and we turn beautiful wooden housings because there's a
mystique about aiming a huge overbuilt grinder at a guest's salad or
mashed potatoes, and so the public will buy our mills. Same with many
other accessories that we buy and add to our turnings (or add our
turnings to the accessory) for both show and blow and hopefully profit.

There are kaleidoscopes, egg stands, bells and light pulls. Devices for
making tea lights, oil candles, night lights, votive cups and confetti
lights are available; so are neck chains, egg timers, toothpick
dispensers, and candy jars, not to mention shaving brushes. They are
offered in stores and catalogs and many feel some sort of urge to buy
them. We decorate or incorporate them with wood turnings and compete
with chainstore imports for sales.
I reckon that turned objects decorated and enabled by storebought
mechanisms and accessories must have cash value and/or satisfy
woodturners; else why do so many make them? Kits and such stuff
wouldn't be offered if we didn't buy them.

I hope this is a fair question to ask without upsetting anyone. Velvet
paintings, pipestem objects, whirleygigs and pink flamingos all have a
place somewhere. I take no position about them; art and vulgarity being
in the eye of each beholder and all that. So...., do you think the
sorts of small craft that depend on novel external accessories or kits
are turned to help pay the bills or to satisfy to some extent, our need
to use our hands? ....or for what other reasons?

Didja ever wonder if by competing with imported novelties we short
change ourselves and cheapen the woodturning craft/art/hobby/business?
In the long run
does this diminish the public's image of turned wooden objects, hence
lower their expectations of what they should pay us for what we do?

There are so many small "pure" turnings to make; ornaments, boxes,
miniatures, bird houses, spurtles, etc. etc. that I wonder why we pander
to mediocrity, if that's what we do when we buy thinly plated, cheaply
made key ring, corkscrew. and pill holder kits? Pens, clocks, bottle
stoppers, and hand mirrors are a diferent matter' They are often
elegant. Anyway they are exempted for my safety.

I admit to a preference for making or owning a wood turning that is all
wood and stands alone, but I have to admit that I sometimes incorporate
do-dads from thrift shops into or onto my turnings. You can't make a
table lamp without a socket, but you can make a candlestick without a
metal cup. While I'm inquiring; do women or for that matter men, really
hang their earrings on a turned ebony stand or take a pink ivory basting
brush to their Thanksgiving turkey while relieving their itch with a
beautiful bird's eye back scratcher turned from a kit?

After all this tedious musing while skirting the edge of unintentional
insults to friends and fellow turners, I'm still the same miserable ole
COC, but .........OTOH!


Turn to Safety, Arch
Fortiter



http://community.webtv.net/almcc/MacsMusings