Where there's smoke
Mar. 18th, 2016 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrWhen we were first starting out as Off Center Ceramics, we were cheap (Frugal, Denise corrects from across the room). We had no idea if this pottery thing was going to work, after all, and certainly no money to spare. So we shared a Saturday Market booth with another potter for the first year and a half, and when she said she wasn't going to do Holiday Market, we signed up for the smallest, cheapest booth they had.
It was eight feet deep by only six feet wide, and barely had room for the two of us, a tiny shelf unit, and the five-foot-wide bench I'd built to display our wares. (Five feet wide because that was all the wider the back seat of my car would hold.) Getting in and out of the booth in the foot of space left to us was a real challenge, as neither of us were exactly svelte.
Fortunately, our neighbor had a 10-by-8-foot corner booth, and kindly offered to leave an aisle along the back wall so that we (and he) could get in and out. Andy sold oil-soaked incense sticks in a dizzying array of scents, both full size and four-inch mini sticks, along with stick-holders in various exotic hardwoods that he got by recycling fork-lift pallets at the international Port of Coos Bay.
I think it was the winter after our second year that I got the idea to make him a thank-you present: a ceramic incense burner in the shape of a dragon, sized for mini-sticks. I saved it for spring, took it down to the Park Blocks for opening weekend and gave it to him as an April Fools/thank you gift. I hoped he'd like it, figured he'd take it home to enjoy, putting it somewhere up out of reach of his cats.
He did like it. He liked it so much that he stoked it with incense and fired it up right in his Market booth. He figured people would stop and admire it, and then buy incense.
You see what's coming, of course. They stopped and admired it. And wanted to buy it. Or one just like it.
In no time at all, I was making dozens of them, first selling in Andy's booth as a package deal with his incense (for which Market needed to create a new rule exception--normally, you're only allow to sell what you make yourself), later from my booth when Andy retired and sold his business to someone else.
They're not as popular as they once were, for which I'm grateful. They're a lot of work, you see: wheel thrown body, handmade eyebrow, ears, arms, feet, wings, tail. Plus the mouth and nose get plugged and reshaped from the original bottle-mouth. And the eyes are made from colored porcelain. And of course I have to cut them apart at leather hard so you can lift the top off and load the incense. All told, there are seven distinct processes involved in making them, and that doesn't include waxing (twice) and glazing them (three dips). I'm amazed I used to sell them for $20.
It was eight feet deep by only six feet wide, and barely had room for the two of us, a tiny shelf unit, and the five-foot-wide bench I'd built to display our wares. (Five feet wide because that was all the wider the back seat of my car would hold.) Getting in and out of the booth in the foot of space left to us was a real challenge, as neither of us were exactly svelte.
Fortunately, our neighbor had a 10-by-8-foot corner booth, and kindly offered to leave an aisle along the back wall so that we (and he) could get in and out. Andy sold oil-soaked incense sticks in a dizzying array of scents, both full size and four-inch mini sticks, along with stick-holders in various exotic hardwoods that he got by recycling fork-lift pallets at the international Port of Coos Bay.
I think it was the winter after our second year that I got the idea to make him a thank-you present: a ceramic incense burner in the shape of a dragon, sized for mini-sticks. I saved it for spring, took it down to the Park Blocks for opening weekend and gave it to him as an April Fools/thank you gift. I hoped he'd like it, figured he'd take it home to enjoy, putting it somewhere up out of reach of his cats.
He did like it. He liked it so much that he stoked it with incense and fired it up right in his Market booth. He figured people would stop and admire it, and then buy incense.
You see what's coming, of course. They stopped and admired it. And wanted to buy it. Or one just like it.
In no time at all, I was making dozens of them, first selling in Andy's booth as a package deal with his incense (for which Market needed to create a new rule exception--normally, you're only allow to sell what you make yourself), later from my booth when Andy retired and sold his business to someone else.
They're not as popular as they once were, for which I'm grateful. They're a lot of work, you see: wheel thrown body, handmade eyebrow, ears, arms, feet, wings, tail. Plus the mouth and nose get plugged and reshaped from the original bottle-mouth. And the eyes are made from colored porcelain. And of course I have to cut them apart at leather hard so you can lift the top off and load the incense. All told, there are seven distinct processes involved in making them, and that doesn't include waxing (twice) and glazing them (three dips). I'm amazed I used to sell them for $20.