More about "lovely things" not to buy today. Or actually, to think about carefully before buying.
I enjoy Whitney's thinking even more than her pottery - her pottery is beautiful, and perhaps someday I'll own some, but her thinking is terrifically valuable to me, as a fellow creative person trying to make a living by her wits.
She agonizes today about the position she's in as a working craftsman: she wants people to buy stuff, particularly her stuff...but she believes, as I do, that to try to seek happiness in consumerism is not that great an idea.
I also agonize over this. Houses (and other buildings) are stuff. But maybe the thing to focus on, for both Whitney and me, is what else does the stuff we trade our working hours for do for us? What support does it give our lives?
I'd like to shift more towards a service economy, rather than a commodity one - I'd like to commission Whitney's and other artists' work, have a conversation about what I want, rather than have them agonize about presenting things that I don't know I want yet.
I'd also like to work with clients who know what they want my product to do for them, they just don't know what shape it should be. I also don't want to play a guessing game about what is selling fast these days...as we've all learned recently, that demand could be falsely inflated by distant investors, who don't care at all how the building would enrich the user's life experience.
The internet supports a commission-driven paradigm, because of easy communication. I bet if I sent Whitney a video of my grandmother's Blue Onion dessert china, and of her cheap WWII japanese flower icecream bowls, and asked for a platter that would bind the two of them closer together, the commissioning of that piece would be a great experience for both of us, adding incredible value to the finished piece in my memory.
I'd have found her by hunting image searches of "floral shaped pottery" on Etsy...so she would have to put up some prototype of things she'd like to make more of, which does demands some risk from the artist, otherwise how can I be seduced or inspired by foreign ideas? But after finding a creator of beautiful ideas, and saying, "can I have a platter that I can put out with A & Z?," I'd set her loose to do her thing. It's what I'm paying for, what I'd like to own a bit of to admire often in my hands, more than just a dish to put yummies on with the icecream and dessert plates.
So buy a terrific product of domestic service this year, that you can use, that enriches your life. Be part of a rich and rewarding interconnected system, not just an end consumer. Commission something - because the client's ideas give the artist so much more than money, they help the loop continue, and we all benefit.
And Whitney? I really am interested in that platter, but I'm gonna have to wait until the financials settle down. You'll have more time in spring, too, I'm thinking.