Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Making sense of Anthropologie...

Is there anyone else out there that gets depressed when they look through the serving/kitchen section of the Anthropologie online shop?  Seriously- that mug is $12 Canadian? Are you sure about that? It looks pretty 'handmade' to me with that seam on the side, fired 3 times- 1 bisque, 1 glaze and 1 decal covering the entire exterior of the mug.  That's a whole lotta work... the mark-up on this stuff has to be at least 50% if not more- it is retail after all. So, let's say, to be generous, that whoever is actually making this mug is getting $6 a mug to cover for labour and supplies and the firings, not to mention all the overhead of actually running a business.  It says 'Imported'.  Hmmm... 
The bowl, looks like a steal at $14 but is also imported.  Then there's these vases- hand-made in a studio in New York by Potter Judy Jackson for $28-37.  So she's getting a maximum of $14-18.50 per vase to wheel-throw and glaze each one by hand?  I mean, this stuff is really lovely.  And cheap.  How is it possible?  Who is making the imported wares and how much are they getting paid?  This doesn't even account for the designer fees- someone had to design the mug or the bowl and get paid for that too. 
 
And then there are these bowls, designed by Australian ceramic artist Samantha Robinson (based on her award-winning watermelon bowl series- her work is beautiful- do check it out), that are made and glazed and decaled, by hand, out of porcelain- get this- in China (it says 'Imported' but if you read the 1 not-so-nice review, the person says they were made in China).  The smaller bowl is $598.00 and the large bowl is $168.00.  What?!? 
All this to say that I don't understand.  How some people are making money at this.  And other's obviously are not.  How one artist is getting (from my very speculative knowledge of this contract) $299 for a bowl she designed and another artist is getting $14 for one she designed and made by hand. And finally, how can a ceramic artist possibly compete with these prices?

2 comments:

Lou said...

Are Judy Jackson's pieces slip cast?

dahlhaus said...

It's hard to say- they look wheel-thrown from the visuals in that they are a little irregular and there are throwing lines, but maybe that's the idea and they are slip-cast. I guess you'd actually have to purchase one to find out how it was made...