In article .net,
"Maxprop" wrote:

So why do some woodturners believe themselves exempt from the laws of supply
and demand? Please allow me to play devil's advocate, if you will.

Sure Max (just hold your index fingers up beside your head for horns),

Becasue they'd rather not turn for commerce if they can't make a decent
living at it, and have other options for work to make ends meet, plus a
tiny shred of self-respect? This does not really address the bowl of
poor quality with the high pricetag you started on (well perhaps it
does, actually).

I do not, at present, turn for commerce. I have hopes that I might, but
I am not willing to turn for 50 cents per hour, and $5 is not so great
either. If I'm not doing it for money, I can have fun with it. If I can
work out still having fun and doing it for money, great. If it has to be
a grinding bore in order to make money at it, it's not worth throwing
away something I have fun doing, in order to have a low paying grind of
a job - I can have fun turning with some other job that might not be so
much fun to pay the bills.

So, I believe that when I get to trying to sell stuff, I'm going to be
making an effort to work on stuff that I can actually hope to get a
living wage out of, and if it does not sell, chopping the price in half
is not going to be the answer. Making something different might be,
finding a different place to sell might be, and retiring from commerce
centered turning might be; screwing myself to compete on price just
isn't it.

If you're turning a "commodity" (especially one that turners in Asia can
crank out), you fall into that sort of supply and demand thing - this is
obviously one reason some serious turners actively seek "art" status,
with the hope of a following that is never going to confuse their salad
bowl with the cheap commodity salad bowls sold at some large discount
store. But I think it's already been mentioned in this thread that few
artists of any medium actually make a decent living off of art - that's
the exception, not the rule.

--
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