pricing carvings

["Clive Murray-White" <clivemw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Lesley,

You have touched on one of the hairiest subjects of all!

PRICES

As a general rule the price you can get for your work rarely has anything at
all to do with notional hourly rates and costs of materials. A sculpture is
only worth what you can get for it; a new artist establishes the value of
their work through sales; though many of us have pretty funny ideas of what
our we should charge for individual works the best way to get an idea is to
ask the gallery director what they think their clientele will pay.

New artist's prices will increase based on perceptions of value, you can ask
what ever you like or even think your work is worth but people will only
laugh at them if the think they are silly.

We have all been there at some time or another believing that our stuff is a
good as something selling for ridiculous figures, forget all that stuff your
work is only as valuable as what you can actually get for it!

It is very important to note that there are, for want of a better
expression, grades of galleries differentiated by the upper limit of what
they can reasonably expect to sell work for.

I'll use Australian prices as a guide but from experience the same sort of
system works both in the US and UK.

Most  galleries showing new artists here would rarely get past the $3000
barrier for anything.

The next barrier comes with Galleries that can get sales up to about
$6000-$7000, slightly more established artists.

Another one at $15000.

And then the real top end that can go all the way from $15000 to hundreds of
thousands of dollars.

We could talk about this for pages but I wont today.

It is probably even more important to understand that the gallery is not
(well it shouldn't be) the enemy of the artist, you will have to gain a
reasonable understanding of the relationships between galleries and the
artists that they show to fully understand the system. the Commissions
charged by galleries can sound a bit over the top until you realise what you
are really getting for your money, a specialist full time sales staff, an
established credible venue and an advisory service, just to name a few.

Be honest with your dealer, hope that he/she is honest with you and always
remember it just as important for the gallery to get as much as they can for
your work as it for you.

Regards Clive

http://www.cowwarr.com/CliveMurray-White/