I'm a hobby turner that makes stuff purely to suit myself. I live on a small rural island accessible by ferry only. Two or three times a year I participate in the Artists Studio Tour here on the island. While I don't need to make a living at this, its nice to cover costs and stash some away for the occasional trip. I make an assortment of things - from utility bowls and platters and cooking chop sticks to specialized, unique embellished bowl sets with innovative closures (Travelin' Bowls), salt vaults with inlays/inserts, magnetic closures and Memory Keepers (embellished lidded bowls with custom closures). There are usually a few pepper grinders and wine stoppers to go with the utility stuff, and some extra long chopsticks that serious cooks seem to appreciate. Premium Crush-Grind grinder mechanisms and stainless wine stopper hardware only - to give me a range of items and prices.
I separate my work into three groups for pricing - pure utility, embellished pieces, and those that I'd really prefer not to sell yet (I do like to live with some of my pieces for a while before finding a suitable forever home for them).
The utility bowls are fairly simple to price. I look at a couple of the bowl mills (there's one in Alaska and one in Vermont I believe) and take their prices based on size as a base. I check some other people that sell online whose work I admire and consider to be similar to what I produce, and, if necessary, adjust that base. I then add time/materials involved for embellishments and a premium because there's a big difference between the mills 'last is same as the first' style. Figured wood adds another factor to the total. By now, I'm well over that base on most items.
Then there are those pieces that I think of more like children than products. I'll take the price I get from the above excesize and double or triple it. These get set off on their own section. I include them incase someone wants to commission something similar. They also give me something to talk about all day long as people come and go.
Labor Day weekend was the last Artists Studio Tour weekend - going through the usual exercise as above my pricing was higher than I'd ever been in previous tours. Surprisingly, Saturday was like a swarm of locusts descended on our remote part of the island. They nearly cleaned me out. By the end of Sunday (the tours are typically two days long) I was taking commissions for stuff I was showing on my iPad. All those pieces I priced not to sell found new homes.
The takeaway? Don't undervalue your work. I was surprised at the range of people that came in - a high proportion or buyers were locals. Typically, in the past, these guys were looking for bargains or special pricing since they're locals...this time they didn't seem to mind paying what I felt my work was worth. Do good work, take pride in what you produce and word gets around.
Oh, and there's added value in having a story to go with every piece – where the wood came from, what kind of figure and why, how the original idea came to be, what's the next iteration going to be?
