This chapter explores the contemporary marketplace for Australian craft and designer maker products as experienced by the makers and mediators in our study. What became clear was the ongoing importance of place—including localness and proximity—to the Australian market. Here emerges a paradox in the current relationship between craft and digital technology. Whereas the whole moment of growth in handmaking is in so many ways a direct result of the internet, with its greater access to materials, skills knowledge and (potentially) markets, it is the value of a face-to-face, hand-to-hand economy, we argue, that is clearly also re-asserting itself here.
Feature Interview 6.1: Laura McCusker, Furniture Maker, Established Maker (Interviewed February 2016)
When I was getting my initial training [in the] mid-ʼ90s, the poster child for a successful career in furniture design was Marc Newson. It was this kind of Cinderella story. He was “discovered” by Madonna’s team of stylists, his Lockheed lounge used in a video clip, and he was whisked away to fame and fortune in Europe. This was the only successful creation myth that existed at that time […] success was to be an internationally renowned designer working for a European-based company that shipped to all corners of the world from fabrication plants who knows where. […] I like making, that actual making bit. Getting my hands on the materials, prototyping, experimenting, refining […] and the other parts too: working collaboratively with the client, the end user, and being part of the complete cycle of making. So, for me, the model closer to how we work is more Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker than Cinderella. We figure that if there’s a local population [of around half a million people] then we only really need to access a very small percentage of these to have more than enough work to be financially viable and enjoy our work. Back in the ʼ90s it was about educating the marketplace, letting people know that furniture was actually made by real people, locally, and (and this next bit is key) it was not prohibitively expensive. Not as cheap as some outlets, but certainly nowhere near as expensive as others. And, of course, the quality is not even comparable. The landscape is quite different now, people are much more aware of the culture of local producers and the benefits of supporting your local economy, whether that’s through buying at farmers’ markets, cellar doors, or from local designers and makers. So, (eventually!) my advice to those just starting out—butchers and bakers always have work. (Laura McCusker, furniture maker, established maker, February 2016)
As outlined in Chap. 1, the current zeitgeist interest in craft and the handmade is not just about an upsurge in the number of makers keen to pursue a creative career; it is also, necessarily, about a there being a willing market enabling those makers—customers ready to pay for handmade or locally designed items that may otherwise look a lot like the cheaper ones now available in Kmart. Or, as Warren and Gibson have written of ‘quality’ small-scale surfboard production, customers who value the ‘possibilities for customisation, the creativity of unique designs, craft skill and the value of artisanal labour—something ‘made by hand’ (Warren and Gibson 2013, 368). In this way, the craft and designer maker scene in Australia is one corner of a larger transnational trend towards the rise of artisanal economies based on small-scale production, with locality and visible making as key to provenance. It connects the contemporary Australian marketplace to similar trends across the Global North, especially in Europe, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, South Africa and North America. For this reason, although he is writing in the specific context of the USA, Ocejo’s (2017) description of craft distilleries could apply just as equally to the marketplace for contemporary craft and design in Australia:
Craft distilleries are part of a groundswell of small-batch, ‘artisanal’ light manufacturing businesses that have recently emerged in the United States. Their closest cousin is the craft beer, or microbrewery movement. Along with their small size, businesses like craft distilleries have a number of attributes. They have respect for handmade products and all the subtle variations they contain. They promote a strong sense of localness in terms of where they source their ingredients, the regions where they sell their products, and/or how they use place as a basis of their brand’s identity. Perhaps most importantly, they create and promote a sense of authenticity, or the idea of a product full of integrity, truth, and real-ness as markers of its quality. And a product can be authentic because it is handmade and comes from a unique place. (54)
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This chapter explores the contemporary marketplace for Australian craft and designer maker products as experienced by the makers and mediators in our study. What became clear was the ongoing importance of place—including localness and proximity—to the Australian market.
Here emerges a paradox in the current relationship between craft and digital technology. Whereas the whole moment of growth in handmaking is in so many ways a direct result of the internet, with its greater access to materials, skills knowledge and (potentially) markets, it is the value of a face-to-face, hand-to-hand economy that is clearly re-asserting itself in our study:
People that I speak to who aren’t really in the arts are like “get it online, you have to be online”. When actually I feel like my customers want the one-on-one connection before they make the purchase and I think that’s so important. Why should they spend X amount of dollars on this or why would they want to buy something from an artist when they haven’t actually met the artist? And like, for myself, when I want to buy an item of clothing or jewellery or that kind of thing, I want to know who it’s coming from. And I have an appreciation if I have a high regard for the artist or that. […] I think perhaps if they market themselves like through Instagram and that kind of thing, showing a snapshot of their life you might get the sense that you know them and that might help. But I think it’s still difficult. I think people in my position, they would do a lot better selling through markets because they do have the one-on-one interaction. (Laurence Coffrant, Australian contemporary jeweller, emerging maker, October 2016)
As we will see in Chap. 8, although having a readily available and polished online presence is an essential and expected new normal baseline to prove you exist—that you are a ‘real’ maker—most sales by the majority of makers we spoke with remain relatively direct and are mediated locally. This chapter outlines these findings, before drilling down more deeply into what the paradox reveals, not just about the contemporary creative marketplace but also about wider cultural and economic values in the broader community.
Where People Are Selling in the Australian Craft and Designer Maker Marketplace
Several questions in the study sought to identify the actual outlets people were selling through, in particular, the question, ‘Which of the following best describes the current distribution methods for your craft product?’, which participants completed directly onto the form. (See Appendix B for an example of the interview schedules employed in the study.) We placed no limit on how many options participants could choose—after all, their particular market profile is unique to them—but in what could at times be a tough ask, especially for those operating across a range of outlets, we also asked them to place a rough percentage next to each option to indicate how many of their sales were made through that particular avenue. Table 6.1 presents established makers’ responses to that question. Columns 1, 2 and 3 indicate the top three responses for each respondent, though this does not indicate whether there was a huge jump between the maker’s top outlet/s and the next most productive outlet. Column 4 shows the total responses for the top three outlets. The table clearly indicates that geography does continue to matter, and direct sales are still a key way Australian craftspeople and designer makers generate income. Indeed, the project clearly demonstrates the ongoing strength of face-to-face markets as key retail sites for the handmade, in line with the larger trend to ‘buy direct’:
I know personally when I go to a market, I want to talk to the person who’s made it, and if I have a really good connection with them, I’m more likely to like their work or buy their work at least, because I have more of an understanding. (Emma Young, glass artist, emerging maker, March 2016)
Table 6.1
The three most significant outlets named by the established makers
Distribution outlet
Order of significance
Total responses
First
Second
Third
Word of mouth
8
11
3
22
Direct to retailers (other than galleries)
10
6
1
17
Direct to public from studio/workshop/home
9
7
1
17
Online
7
5
4
16
Public craft fairs
10
5
1
16
Through a commercially funded gallery or exhibition
9
5
2
16
Direct commissions
4
7
3
14
Through a craft shop
5
3
6
14
Wholesalers
2
4
4
10
Through a publicly funded gallery or exhibition
3
7
0
10
Street markets
4
2
1
7
Other (co-ops/artist collectives)
2
0
0
2
Trade-only fairs
1
0
0
1
Note: 20 of the 81 established makers gave no response or percentage
Where the first and second most significant outlets were given equal percentages, both were designated the main outlet and the next category left empty. Where equal percentages were given for the third most significant outlets, the data were not included; many of these figures were low and shared across multiple outlets, which would have skewed the significance of the higher percentage responses
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Without dismissing the impact the internet has had on the scene’s capacity to grow, one of the most striking findings emerging from the study was the ongoing proximity of sales in terms of limited degrees of separation between maker and seller, both geographically and in terms of friendship or social networks. For what is not evident in the figures presented here is that in approximately half of the cases where people sold primarily through public craft fairs or street markets, this was far and away their primary outlet, often listed at 60 per cent or higher.
But even online selling relationships tended to be both socially and geographically local. Although we did interview many makers who were distributing to markets interstate and internationally, the majority of sales by the majority of makers remain relatively local, even when conducted online:
The thing with the portrait commissions, they’re all through Etsy, because yesterday I put up a portrait, a cute family portrait that I [had] commissioned, and then I said “Be sure to place your Christmas orders soon,” and exclamation marks, “because Christmas is around the corner, make sure you don’t miss out.”. About five minutes later, I got four emails saying, “Oh, that pet portrait.” […] They’re from Adelaide. But the portrait that I’d just finished, that was for a girl in Brisbane and I was doing some other dogs for a girl in […], they send me photographs and then I draw them up and get them printed onto really nice paper, and I offer framing for $20 extra, because I’m open and honest about this, it’s just the Ikea frame, and pretty much everyone says yes to that. (Pip Kruger, illustrator, emerging maker, September 2017)
Such commission work could be done anywhere in the world; clients send the illustrator an image file and an easy-to-send print is mailed back to them. But the reality is that, even when people spend a lot of time focusing on promotion including their online profile, networking and marketing (which are not mutually exclusive activities), the breadth of networks through which one can be known is limited. Even on the global marketplace that is Etsy, those finding or noticing your work are very often those who already know your work—often existing customers. In this way social media and platform (e.g. Etsy) contact are simply one mechanism by which existing friends and previous customers can look to reconnect and recommission work from a maker, hence the value of both having business cards available at markets and maintaining an active online presence. In Table 6.1 this is evident in the prevalence of ‘word of mouth’ sales—often repeat customers (having first purchased from them at the market) or people who aware of their work through friendship networks. In this way, the majority of the people we spoke to were still selling quite ‘directly’ to customers—if not directly ‘hand-to-hand’, then generally within limited geographies and/or social networks.
Etsy and Online Selling in Australia
I looked at Etsy but Etsy is just so full. I thought I wouldn’t be visible. I sort of thought that it was too late to join now. (Studio potter, established maker, November 2016)
When the project was initially proposed in 2014, Etsy and other online outlets for the handmade were experiencing a moment of exponential growth and media attention. Consequently, the possibilities for further decentralisation of production and distribution as a result of online international retailing, especially via Etsy, were an initial focus of the study. What we found, however, was that although some of the makers we interviewed were indeed having success online, very few stayed long on Etsy and equivalent sites after the initial excitement. Instead, the online mechanisms leading most directly to sales were social media—Instagram in particular—or simply direct contact via email or from a business or personal website. As we know, despite the hype of the global marketplace, geography matters, especially when the products being sold exist as physical, often fragile, items, rather than digital files:
I have two online stores. One is my onehappyleaf.com and the other one is my Etsy store. So Etsy certainly gets more traffic and more sales than my online store, so what I do, I usually get about one or two online orders a day so I just go to the post office once or twice a week, so I’m not going there continuously and might be posting off a wholesale order as well at the same time. […] Because Etsy’s obviously US-owned and they [US customers] always seem to think that I’m from the US as well, because after two days they wonder where their order is, which is fun. But […] my online store that, I’d say, it’s the reverse—it’s probably 70 per cent Australian and the rest, a mixture of US, some from France, just random places around the world. (One Happy Leaf, jeweller, established maker, November 2016)
I think Etsy is more about smaller products again and being able to ship them easily, and my stuff isn’t like that. (Joslin Koolen, metalwares designer maker, emerging maker, April 2017)
For others, the low volume of sales they made through Etsy did not warrant the effort, especially factoring the costs of postage from Australia to elsewhere in the world into the buying decision:
Etsy was never my main focus anyway. I used Etsy as a way of creating an online portfolio for actual brick and mortar stockists. So if they wanted to see what my products were I said, “Go on to my Etsy shop, you can see all the prices, you can see everything photographed, you can see the whole range, then you can come to me again and tell me what you want and we can put a wholesale order together.” But because I then have this Etsy shop set up, of course sales came through that as well. But my ideal way of selling is wholesale, big orders, sending them off, and being done with. Etsy has me running back and forth to the post office for one greeting card in my lunch break, and I just think, “This is not worth $6.” Yeah, unless it’s a big order. (Pip Kruger, illustrator, emerging maker, August 2015)
Similarly, research participants who sought to focus on other sales avenues offered a number of reasons for their lack of success with selling online via Etsy or their decision not even to attempt to engage with Etsy. For many, the sheer number of sellers on the popular site was an impediment to the visibility of their products:
If you [didn’t want to] get lost in the, in the massive thing of Etsy […], you did have to fork out. So it’s not as easy as they portray it. (Allison Howard, yarn worker, emerging maker, October 2017)
In fact, I don’t even think we consider[ed] Etsy. At first we didn’t want to go near there because [there’s] so many people doing it. […] It’s so hard to be known. I mean, I feel like I’m just, we’re just a small fish in this big ocean. (Textiles, emerging maker, April 2016)
I explored Etsy at one stage and couldn’t be bothered. You’d look up jewellery on Etsy and there’s 7,500 whatever pages. You’d think no, you’d get lost on something like that. (Alannah Sheridan, jewellery, emerging maker, March 2016)
Likewise, the lack of focus on the individual makers or their shops, with the Etsy brand itself so dominant, put some makers off wanting to invest in marketing via Etsy:
I find that you really have to make things in order to [succeed on Etsy], like it’s like a second job, like you have to really make your descriptions and your text and your photos and your products for Etsy and everyone that I talk with, when I ask, oh where did you get these from? On Etsy, they always say Etsy, they never say the designer’s name. So I feel it’s not really, it doesn’t really help. I find again, I don’t get people from the Etsy public finding me there, but I have my own customers that I give the link and they go to my Etsy shop, so I just find it pointless in a way. (Valeria D’Annibale, jewellery, emerging maker, October 2017)
Others noted how focusing their marketing primarily around their Etsy shopfront also ran the risk of directing potential customers to competing similar products:
At the moment I’m just redirecting [my website] to my Etsy shop and, moving forward, I’m actually going to have a platform on Etsy and also on my website because Etsy is amazing and you get traffic from random places, which is great. However, it also means that if someone has been given my card and they go to my Etsy shop there’s all suggestions for other people [producing similar items]. (Naomi Stanley, shoemaker, emerging maker, October 2015)
For others still, online sales sites lacked the personal touch and the opportunity for potential customers to ‘try on’ the highly tactile, handmade product. For these kinds of reasons, for Valeria D’Annibale, Etsy was simply an easy way to set up an online shopfront for customers who found her in other, more local ways:
I have an Etsy [shop] The only things I have sold on Etsy were to people who saw me at the markets first. Because it’s such a different material—like if you see a picture of this but you have no idea—it’s light—it’s inflexible—is it going to break—what is it? Probably my silver pieces will be easier to sell online; silver everyone knows what it is—everyone knows how to care about it. […] and I find it quite hard to keep it up because I make—like all the things I make are fairly unique so they are like one each of them. So I might have […] this bangle in a couple of colours, but I actually make 15 or 20 different colours and I don’t update it all the time [because] I’m not really selling much. (Valeria D’Annibale, jewellery, emerging maker, March 2016)
Another interviewee deployed the Etsy website in a similar way:
I think it’s [Etsy’s] very valuable so that you have somewhere to direct people, especially if you’re at a market or things like that; […] but it’s not a regular source of income that I rely on. (Illustrator, emerging maker, September 2016)
For those who have had success on Etsy, the trick has been to find the right balance between the costs associated with uploading the item for sale (particularly the cost of photographing the pieces) and the income to be generated from it. There are two diverging paths one might take:
1.
If it is a one-off product, make it a high-end/expensive one to cover the costs associated with photographing, describing, costing and listing it.
2.
If it’s a cheaper product, make sure it is reproduceable and list each colour in which it is available.
Makers with insecure supply chains, including those seeking to source environmentally (such as using off-cuts), found it more difficult to guarantee that level of product consistency. For their online advertising, they tended to lean towards faster updating via Facebook and Instagram, rather than using Etsy or similar store-like interfaces.
Two connected observations can be made from the comments reported here. Firstly, even though we asked all the makers we interviewed whether they were selling via Etsy, emerging makers were more likely to have explored or at least considered this option and found it less than they had hoped for or expected. As can be seen in Fig. 8.2 (Chap. 8), just as many established as emerging makers were using Etsy, but they commented upon it less, suggesting they came to this experience with less sense of expectation and with a stronger sense of their product, the market and whether it would work in this context. However, emerging makers were not completely dismissive of the Etsy website, and even if the profits they may have wished were not forthcoming, many spoke positively about it as a valuable information-sharing community:
The Etsy sellers’ handbook is pretty good. The bits I’ve seen of it they’ll just have other writers from there or practitioners and sellers on there, successful sellers just giving you advice on heaps of different aspects, more so in a blog kind of format. So there’ll be anything from product photography to marketing, packaging, all that kind of thing. (Tara Matthews, illustrator, emerging maker, August 2015)
Secondly, although our focus at the start of the project was on the promotional and distributional affordances of online communication, what quickly became clear was the internet’s wider value as a source of information on everything from making techniques (including upskilling and new processes) to advice on how to run a small business (everything from the basic mechanics of organising payment systems to sophisticated approaches to marketing and achieving cut-through in this crowded field). Clearly, a new generation of makers are bypassing or at least augmenting traditional, more geographically bounded means of sourcing information and a sense of community (e.g. professional associations and state-based support organisations) to obtain a large part of this through information gathering and sharing on the internet, including through Etsy (Table 6.2).
Table 6.2
How interviewees perceived Etsy
Strengths
Weaknesses
• ‘Really easy to use, with lots of guidance about how to present work and so forth.’
• ‘Good alternative for an online presence to support markets and other sales.’
• ‘Trustworthy.’
• ‘Easier to get traction with than an individual website.’
• ‘Takes care of things like currency transactions.’
• ‘Can develop good networks with other makers.’
• ‘Great online tutorials and other resources for sellers.’
• ‘Great benefits if chosen as a Featured Seller or get some other boost like that.’
• ‘Potentially worth joining to be part of the local Etsy physical markets.’
• ‘Too big—easy to get lost.’
• ‘People expect to pay low prices making it difficult to compete with cheaper markets; also competing with markets with greater economies of scale’ [e.g. USA].
• ‘Perception that it is a saturated market.’
• ‘Keeping your online shop updated is time-consuming and fiddly.’
• ‘Pointing people towards Etsy can mean lost sales because potential customers are more easily able to access competitors.’
• ‘Harder for people with less obvious products because of the limitations of the keyword search.’
• ‘Not good for one-off designs because of the time it takes to get the descriptions and images online.’
• ‘If you don’t want to get lost in Etsy need to pay for advertising.’
• ‘Costs of running an Etsy shop mean that need a certain turnover to make it worthwhile.’
• ‘It is reductive, individual makers and brands can get lost—“I got it on Etsy.”’
The Desire for Face-to-Face Interaction and the Rise of Curated Designer Maker Markets
Over the past decade in Australia a number of new large markets have emerged nationally, promoting themselves specifically asdesigner maker events largely to reach newer and often younger markets, including by distancing this contemporary marketplace from stereotypes of old-fashioned, poor-quality or simply twee craft street markets. Such ‘curated’ markets as Finder Keepers, Bowerbird Design Market, Big Design Market, Makers & Shakers and Handmade Canberra are now popular regular fixtures of the Australian designer maker scene. These events have thrived in a marketplace where, as Hracs and Jakob (2015) observe, ‘Consumers are drawn to these experiences because they are considered more authentic, facilitate creativity and self-actualisation and result in a “story” that can be converted into social and cultural capital’ (78). Although they are often not cheap to enter or travel to, for makers able to get a stall and stock it with enough produce to sustain them across what is often three days, they offer a guaranteed market of interested paying customers who are keen to buy ‘direct’ from the maker and/or designer (or their family or staff member who is staffing the stall at that moment).
The organisers of these kinds of markets locate them very much within the wider zeitgeist moment of interest in the artisanal and ‘buying direct’:
I do think there’s a soulfulness in handmade things, and I do wonder if people have got a little bit removed from that sense of community and actually meeting someone and hearing the story about how it’s made, hearing the story about them, how it’s come to be. So I think it’s the experience of actually being there at the event that people enjoy […], but, yeah, it is about the product as well. It’s just, it’s very human isn’t it the whole thing is very human. [… In addition to stalls selling wares] the other aspect of Bowerbird has been demonstrations and I think that’s been really key to what we’ve done and even workshops that we’ve run. Because I think initially we’d have people come through and a lot of people go, “Oh gosh, it’s so expensive,” they’re coming thinking it’s a market, and they’d go, “It’s really expensive,” and now we’ve had a few people who’ve demonstrated and one woman was weaving and people would come up and go, “Gosh they’re so expensive your shawls.” And then they’d actually see her weaving it and they go, “Oh you actually make the fabric. You haven’t just brought the fabric and hemmed it.” And then they go, “Oh okay, now I understand,” and—I think that comment comes out a lot less now and I think people come looking for quality and looking for things that are handmade and that they value it more. And so I think running workshops and things concurrently with the event, that’s just been our way of sort of saying look, this is what goes into the making process. It’s often incredibly involved. It takes hours and something might be $60 but someone might have taken 10 hours to actually make that or certainly made the first prototypes and things that have taken ages and ages to get it started. So that was important that people actually value just how much goes into making things by hand. (Jane Barwick, Bowerbird Design Market, June 2015)
As Jane Barwick articulates, at least in the early days of the Bowerbird Design Market, it was important to demonstrate making as part of the process of educating this new audience for craft on the reason for higher price points for the handmade. This resonates again with Ocejo’s (2017) study and his interviewees’ educative work with their clients, which he refers to as ‘“service teaching”, or education through service’ (192–193). For our makers, as likely also Ocejo’s craft distillers, barbers, butchers and bartenders, this face-to-face interaction performs a two-way educative role. Just as potential customers are able to acquire a greater appreciation of the skills and labour that goes into what they may purchase through either seeing it being made (in person, images or videos) or speaking with the maker about it, makers, too, acquire invaluable (if not always comfortable) market feedback:
I think it’s [getting feedback from interacting with people at markets] one of the most enjoyable parts about doing a market, and I think it allows you to see what areas you need improving on. Whereas like with a website or that kind of thing, selling your work online, you don’t have that. (Laurence Coffrant, Australian contemporary jeweller, emerging maker, October 2016)
I like the personal relationship with people [you get at markets], but at the same time I get scared. […] there’s this sort of barrier that you don’t know how to break the ice. So you look at them looking at your work, right—It’s really vulnerable. I don’t know how to express that. If you are trying to put yourself out there and then they don’t comment or anything. They do be like “that’s nice” but you know, then they walk away. How [do] you infer from that behaviour? (Female, textiles, emerging maker, April 2016)
Makers, especially women makers, commonly expressed their discomfort with the market stall obligation of having to literally stand behind their products while people were walking by judging them. In this way, what is otherwise lauded (especially by buyers) as a valuable experience loses a little of its gloss.
Craft, Design and Local Economies in a Global World
In this marketplace of physical items and often localised or at least face-to-face interactions, it is not surprising that the ‘tyranny of distance’ still present in international and domestic supply chains continues to affect both inputs and markets. This can have both positive and negative consequences, as will be explored via two diverse case studies from our study: Tasmanian-based furniture making and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander craft and designer made work, especially that of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers of Australia’s Central Desert.
Distance as having an expensive negative impact upon their business was a particular frustration for Tasmanian makers,1 especially those needing to move large items:
I do definitely have my eye on the international market, and I want to present myself as international and not local, although most of my work is local. I think the biggest challenge is for furniture, at least, it’s really important to go to trade shows and stuff like that, and the price barrier to do that is just too much for me to make it possible. So that would probably be the biggest challenge, [the cost of] actually taking my work and exhibiting it overseas where people will see it. […] I guess because it’s furniture and people want to see it in person before they buy it, so online doesn’t really work for that well. (Liam Mugavin, furniture maker and designer, emerging maker, September 2015)
Already located in an island country that is geographically distant from many of the industrialised world’s key markets, Tasmanian makers have the added disadvantage of being located on an island even further away—situated off the southern coast of the continent, separated from the mainland by ‘frickin’ Bass Strait […] the most expensive piece of water to cross. (Male, furniture designer and maker, emerging maker, February 2017)
The cruel irony of this is that a longstanding strength of Australian post-colonisation craft and making has been the Tasmanian furniture industry, an outgrowth of the state’s legacy of plentiful and beautiful forests and thus timber. This legacy has been cultivated through successive commitments to supporting quality education and training, especially now through the University of Tasmania. But, whereas the materials for making the furniture items are easily available locally, the reality of getting them to markets beyond Tasmania remains a significant financial barrier to growth and a higher profile:
There’s also that [Bass Strait’s] one of the most costly pieces of sea across in the world, I think people don’t quite fathom it unless you’re from Tassie, like that piece of sea is actually quite costly to get things. (Male, furniture and lighting designer maker, established maker, February 2016)
It also impacts upon the costs of bringing in specialist heavy equipment:
This morning I got a call from this guy. I’ve had this piece of equipment on order for six months and it’s finally arrived in Australia from Canada and the last little leg of the journey is proving to be quite complex and the freight charge was going to be 1300 to get this bit of equipment here, from the mainland, from Melbourne to here. So he broke this bad news to me and I thought, “Oh really.” He said, “Yes this is often the case when you’ve got the Bass Strait involved,” and so he was looking around because they can change their freight charge in a matter of hours depending on how much they’ve got on the ship, so if they’ve got a little bit of space left they’re prepared to drop the price […] So yes he got a price which was 580 or something like that so I said “Yes” and I just thought that was him calling just now but he’s obviously got my email and it’s all happening so in a week’s time—. That’s the other thing, you have to think ahead and order way before you run out of something so you’re also sort of paying out sort of before you actually need something so I’ve got lots of stock here that somebody in Melbourne wouldn’t need to hold […]. Just because of geography. (Lunaboots, shoemaker, established maker, February 2017)
On the upside to the same equation, Tasmanian makers also, on the whole, spoke more consistently than any other geographic cohort in our study (barring the Tjanpi Desert Weavers to be discussed shortly) of the unique material aspects of place that they have exclusive access to. This took a number of forms. For Scott van Tuil, it was both the potential for an ethos of unique design based on local natural and built environments and the materials to work with. Such as the sandstone used in his ‘Core’ candle holders:
So this form is a reference to the dam wall in the Gordon River Dam, the double curvature wall, and looking back at our hydro-electric schemes and the engineering around that and that’s where the turbine series came from as well [see Fig. 6.1]. […] so it might be through form or it might be through materials—so these sandstone, this is all about just using the material that’s very Tasmanian and it has the GPS location of the quarry on the bottom also [reinforcing] that idea of knowing exactly where it’s come from and just knowing that you—I love that idea of you literally owning or [that you] can hold a small piece of Tasmania [see Fig. 6.2]. (Scott van Tuil, furniture maker and designer, emerging maker, March 2018)
A photograph of an art piece resembling a turbine with numerous blades and is shaped like a bowl.
Fig. 6.1
A piece from Scott van Tuil’s ‘turbine’ series. (Photograph: Rosina Possingham Photography)
A photograph of an object has latitude and longitude mentioned at its circular base, along with the name Van Tuil.
Fig. 6.2
Scott van Tuil holding the ‘Core’ sandstone case to reveal the latitude and longitude of where the stone was quarried on the base. (Photograph: Susan Luckman)
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Another unique aspect of materials sourcing in Tasmania referred to by a number of the furniture and homewares makers we spoke to was the availability of one-off opportunities to access timbers such as Hydrowood—timber reclaimed from forests controversially flooded by dams such as the one on the Gordon River to make lakes feeding the production of hydroelectric power, often in the context of seeking to source materials sustainably.
Arguably, there is one sector of the Australian craft and designer maker market—contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander making—which not only benefits in some ways from the perception and realities of distance but has also been able to cut through the online marketplace with a distinct presence. Underpinned by millennia of storytelling and making, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander craft and design in country, sold via the internet, operates at the intersection of twenty-first-century economies and technologies, amidst the realities of lives disrupted across time and place. This is particularly notable as it is set against the ongoing backdrop of the dispossession of their land, a national failure to acknowledge the history of genocidal policies towards Aboriginal peoples and the associated ongoing collective failure to move forward with a true reconciliation. In many ways, it is in this sector, via online sales, that the potential of the decentralised geographies of Australian international online craft and design retail is being realised. Online sales through sites such as Etsy are an extension of the art centre model for creative production in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities that has enabled artists to make a living while staying on their (frequently remote) country. In our project we identified more than 50 social enterprise art centres with some engagement with craft and design (Table 6.3 lists some of these for indicative purposes).
Table 6.3
Some of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community centres producing craft and designer maker goods for sale
Central Desert
Tiwi Islands (Northern Australia)
Arnhem Land (Northern Australia)
Kimberley Region (North West Australia)
Torres Strait (North-eastern Australia)
Yarrenyty Arltere Artists
Manupi Arts
Maningrida Arts & Culture
Waringarri Aboriginal Arts
Gab Titui Cultural Centre
Ernabella Arts
Bima Wear
Elcho Island Arts
Nagula Jarndu (Saltwater Woman) Design
Moa Arts
Hermannsburg Potters—Aranda Artists of Central Australia
Tiwi Arts
Bula’bula Arts
Maruku Arts
Bábbarra Women’s Centre
Working across a spectrum of creative practice and price points, what unites this work is that it is globally distinctive both visually and for its cultural meanings. A number of these organisations focus on printing unique local designs onto fabric, which is sold either as raw fabric or sewn into clothing, accessories or household items. Such items have the additional advantage of being easy to post as they are relatively lightweight and are not fragile. The expenses associated with distance become not only expected but part of the whole experience of purchasing work from these makers, with their own unique and significant to-the-product geographies. Similarly, whether it be in the maker’s stories they represent, the design elements employed or the actual materials used in their production, these products tell a distinct story of place, which is then sent out to the world.
To tease this out through one example from our interviews, the Tjanpi Desert Weavers (https://tjanpi.com.au/) offers a unique take on the frequent hardwiring of making to the politics of social enterprise and connection to local environments (Fig. 6.3). Tjanpi means ‘dry grass’ in Pitjantjatjara. The Tjanpi Desert Weavers was formed by the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (NPY) Women’s Council ‘to enable women in remote central deserts to earn their own income from fibre art’ (https://tjanpi.com.au/pages/about, accessed 23/11/18)):
[The] NPY Women’s Council […] delivers a number of services across the NPY region that are not covered by government or any other organisation. So it’s filling a need, a gap as expressed by the membership itself. The membership is composed of Aboriginal women that reside on the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara Lands, and what is also commonly referred to as the tri-state border region of Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia. We cross three state jurisdictions [350,000 square kilometres] in the service delivery of that region. […] There has been a concerted shift to move Tjanpi into the fine art market with the evolution of sculptural work. Baskets alone mean we are lumped into the craft market inhibiting the price point for us and competing with a cheaper import market. But we also try to position Tjanpi more broadly in the Australia contemporary art landscape rather than just being Indigenous art. We are also making inroads into the design market as well with the creation of a bespoke lampshade range with Koskela. We are always working towards diversified revenue streams to ensure our long-term sustainability. It’s quite challenging because Tjanpi operates across a vast region of extreme economic disadvantage and supports 26 communities within that region that are geographically isolated from mainstream markets. It is costly. We facilitate an annual program of skills development workshops in communities. We support senior artists, emerging artists and new women to create fibre art and elevate practice. This regular visitation allows us to also purchase artwork up-front and provide immediate income. We support between 300–400 women a year to create work. Some women prefer to make the occasional artwork, others are producing artwork more regularly. Senior artists will produce exhibition quality work and others are producing work to purchase food at the community store and feed kids. (Michelle Young, manager of Tjanpi Desert Weavers, NPY Women’s Council, October 2015)
A photograph of an elderly woman holding a rod-like tool and a bunch of grass.
Fig. 6.3
Mary Katatjuku Pan from Amata (SA) collecting minarri grass to make works as part of Tjanpi Desert Weavers, 2017. (Photograph: Rhett Hammerton)
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The hundreds of women working in 26 communities across three states, who are making woven products for sale or gallery display for Tjanpi Desert Weavers at any one time, are not only inspired by their country but weave the very landscape into their work by incorporating the local grasses, which are cultivated, collected and treated for this purpose. The presence of the grass actually poses a challenge to the growth of some international markets for the work, with customs requirements precluding easy importation. For this reason, at the time we spoke with the organisation, their primary focus for market growth was the urban domestic market, along with international art commissions (work by Tjanpi artists was featured in that year’s Venice Biennale). Clearly, their country (the Central Desert landscape) and traditional forms (the coolamon or pitti bowl) are not only a source of inspiration but offer a unique product made by a diverse creative workforce, grounded in place and valued in a global market in search for points of difference—things with a story and a provenance.
For Tjanpi Desert Weavers, the relationship of care for the community even extends to being able to provide financial support in return for work for women who, for various reasons, find themselves near the headquarters in town (Alice Springs) and want to get back to country. Because some of the works that arrive in the Alice Springs office are not yet ready for retail sale in the urban coastal centres, additional employment can be provided to women who can work to refine these items to prepare them for sale. This saves them from having to find other means of making their way home.
Localism, Craft and Contemporary Exchange Economies
The emphasis on the local within the craft marketplace needs to be understood in a global context. In the context of increased globalisation, there is a desire to scale back damaging production systems and reclaim a sense of ownership and thus responsibility for the impact of production and consumption. As they do elsewhere across the Global North, the largely middle-class purchasing demographic dominating this part of the Australian market uphold the local, generally not in hostility to a sense of transnational or even global belonging, but largely because of it. Although the impacts of climate change are already starting to influence individual behaviour and will continue to do so, many of these people travel, and when they do, again they seek out the local not only for all kinds of ethical but also, importantly, point-of-difference reasons. Whether it be a Tasmanian wood product, hand-printed fabric homewares or clothing or a Tjanpi woven sculpture, each (like other handmade items) is unique. Although each locally designed item may not be unique per se (within makers’ admittedly limited capacities to enforce intellectual property rights), the specific product at least should be.
In a world where so many of the things we encounter are now ‘made in China’ and exported widely to an increasingly homogenised market, it should be no surprise that crafts especially, as well as locally designed goods, are in demand. As British ceramic artist and writer Edmund de Waal has recently stated, ‘Craft is the great otherness in our culture’ (quoted in Gibson 2015, 35). This sense of craft pushing back against a rising tide of sameness in material goods was also clearly reflected in our interviews:
I think that that’s a very critical ingredient that we need to put into the mix, which is […] why people would choose to buy a handmade or a, you know, it doesn’t need to be handmade, but a designed thing, rather than a mass-produced object? I think that kind of turn of the wheel where people are feeling the [need for a] sort of antidote to globalisation [comes from] that sense of belonging to something that’s very local. I think that it’s one of the reasons that when tourists go to visit a place they pick up something that’s made from that area, you know. […] it’s a tangible trigger for their memory of that place and that time. (Tamara Winikoff, National Association for the Visual Arts, December 2015)
When people come to a region like this [Cairns, the visitor gateway to the Great Barrier Reef and Daintree Rainforest National Parks], when they’re looking at souveniring from this region, and they are looking for something that’s unique and individual, […] they already have a price point in mind that they’ll go to, no matter what it is. So they’ve got the spending money in their pocket, they’ll buy five of that or one of that, and it’s that particular item that sums up and embodies their experience, that will get it across the line. That might be a beautiful bowl or a cup, or it might be a print, or it might be a range of jewellery, whatever it might be. Yeah, I have noticed that unique individual pieces are being more taken up than in the past. (Justin Bishop, director of KickArts, November 2015)
I live in Coogee, but you know I don’t want a cushion with “Coogee” on it, even though I make them. But they never go into [local] people’s houses. The Coogee cushion nearly always goes to the UK. […] There’s an Irish community live in Coogee, and there’s a woman called Mary […] I am her go-to person for a going-away gift. And so I just get this person to ring me who says, “Hi Robert, it’s Mary. Such and such is going home, can you do me a cushion in this colour? Kelly will be around to pick it up next week”. And so I have a standard thing for these people now, it’s called the Mary discount. If you’re Irish and your part of this group you get a Mary discount. […] Ireland, it’s full of them, full of cushions saying “Coogee” or “Bondi”. (Bob Window, Handmade Cushions and Found Objects, established maker, October 2016)
Territory people like my stuff because I have lots of Territory-inspired designs and they’re a very parochial mob. [Visitors too] definitely, and I think what they like about my stuff is that it’s not like crappy souvenirs. It’s got the tourist appeal without being some crappy plastic piece of rubbish with “Darwin, NT” printed all over it. (Robyn ‘Boo’ McLean, custom textile design, homewares and accessories, established maker, July 2016)
Much tourist practice is often legitimately criticised for cultural and social as well as economic and environmental reasons; however, the translocalisms implicit in the attraction of locally made goods tap into a long history of interest in unique material cultures. For many people, this is central to the experience of travel. Being able to do so speaks of economic privilege, let alone the genocidal history of colonialism, including, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, the theft of their cultural artefacts—even their very bodies—as mementos and trophies of otherness. Relationships of obligation and exploitation are not new. They are mentioned here to historicise the centrality of craft and making to tourism. What is new is that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-controlled social enterprises are now in a position to capitalise upon the demand, and this is something to be celebrated and nurtured. Tourism—domestic and international—also provides a valuable ‘local’ outlet for many of the makers we spoke to in the Crafting Self project. In a globalised world, the handmade or locally designed object is the tourist antidote to material sameness and the ubiquity of mass-produced objects, where ‘“China”, in this story of making, is shorthand for the logic of capitalism in extremis’ (Dudley 2014, 103).
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Tasmania is the only Australian state not located on continental Australia. Rather it is an island located off the south-eastern corner of Australia, with its northern coastline beginning around 500 kilometres south of Melbourne.
On the upside, many Tasmanian makers, especially those based in or selling through Hobart, have benefited from the tourism boom that has accompanied the opening of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). With ferries regularly leaving to go to the museum from a nearby pier featuring craft, artisanal and designer maker goods, art retailers based in and around the Salamanca Arts Centre have felt definite flow-on effects from increased touristnumbers:
The rent is more where we are now, but because we’re in the middle of the Arts Centre we get a lot more walk-through traffic. Every time I’m in there I talk to people when they come in, and I ask them where they’re from, and have a bit of a chat. And there are a lot of tourists. […] I’ve had lots and lots of conversations with people, particularly when there are festivals on, to say “What are you doing” and “Why are you here”, and so much of it is due to MONA. So the ‘MONA effect’ it really is a big thing and it has had a massive impact, because so many people are coming to Tasmania to see MONA or to go to a MONA event, and everything else they do is just an add-on and everyone else benefits. (Tanja von Behrens, jeweller, established maker, February 2016)
