How many?

How many artists does it take to make a show? How many traders does it take to make a bead fair?

As the year progresses, we've been doing a lot of thinking (ouch!) and looking at the aspects of being reliant on bead fairs for part of our sales each year. The main thing we've noticed is the growing number of fairs and also the growing number of beadmakers at the fairs.

Great? Maybe. Um... not really?

It's funny how the same people who use lampwork in their jewellery and try to sell at various venues may find that the limit on jewellery artists in a fair is a problem that they aren't happy about, yet may not feel that the same should apply to shows where supplies are sold, such as bead fairs. The more the merrier for them, a bigger selection and all that.

Is that how it really works? Not in the UK, for a few reasons. One is that there are far fewer beadmakers in the UK than in the US, which lessens the pool of artists who trade and competition is lower for places at fairs because organisers are not being selective about artists. If there were proportionately the same number of beadmakers in the UK as the US, there would be several thousand people vying for places at fairs, rather than several dozen.

Beadmakers are a special section of any fair, they aren't there selling bought-in items where pricing is pretty much set by the pressures of the market forces in action, because ten traders selling crystal bicones or Czech glass beads or semi-precious stones are paying approximately the same wholesale prices and the quality and styles are fairly well the same across the board. So, the shopper can spend time comparing strands of carnelian 8mm beads, find the best price which probably varies within a pound a strand for them, they're made to a certain size, standard and don't want variation or technique applied to make them individual or unique. A show with a certain number of sellers will find that the competition is stiff but at least it's fairly even based on the items being sold.

Not the same for beadmakers.

Lampwork beads are individually created, and the level of skill, the technical quality of the beads and the ability of the artist to produce beads of any value at all varies widely, sometimes even wildly. There is little to compare between an artist who takes time to create unique and original works and offers them with an assurance of several of the most basic things and a beadmaker who sells beads that should be considered 'practice' beads.

Good holes, cleaned, annealed.

You'd think those were a given but it's not always true. People sell unannealed beads or claim that certain shapes mean that there is no way to NOT have sharp edges or any of a large number of other things that make us go 'huh?' a lot. And yet, because they're huddled under the overly large canopy of the 'handmade lampwork' category, there is a feeling from the general buyer that all beads are created equal.

The plain fact is that some beads are more equal than others, and they are not made with the expectation of being sold simply to buy more glass to make more beads. It's not the chicken/egg here, because there is another factor, and that's pricing.

Some artists actually work at the whole beadmaking thing hard enough to try and make it a business that will and occasionally does support the artist. When they sell at bead fairs where people are selling at hobbyist prices it does one of two things. It undervalues or devalues the entire 'handmade by artists' concept of beadmaking and it undercuts people whose work should receive significantly higher prices but cannot because they are competing with people who price their handmade beads at the same level as cheap imported lampwork.

Not everyone who makes beads is concerned about the market. Nor are they concerned about other artists, or frankly anything other than just funding their hobby. And because the bead fairs are allowing more and more hobbyist beadmakers to book, beadmakers who expect to sell beads for 'art' prices are finding that they spend a lot of their time explaining why their bead sets are five to ten times the cost of someone else's when they're both selling 'handmade lampwork beads'. Yes, everyone has to start somewhere, but people who get out there to sell should spend some time taking a look at their market and also their fellow beadmakers and learn to price their work like an artist and not like a hobbyist.

We've reached this point and have spent a lot of time looking at the bead fairs for this year and 2010. In addition to the spate of new shows being planned for next year, we've decided to be a bit drastic about it and are cutting out all shows where we feel that the balance of beadmakers to other traders is not even. A show with 40 traders with 12 of them being beadmakers means a disproportionate balance of traders, and that is unfair to the traders. No craft fair would allow a 25% balance of jewellery makers, in fact it's now very difficult to get into a top-quality craft fair if you do make jewellery. Why it should be different for beadmakers in bead fairs is beyond us, and we're doing the only thing we can, which is voting with our feet.

So, if you go to a bead fair and we're not there, take a head count of the beadmakers and give it some thought because quantity doesn't always guarantee anything at all but lots of tables booked for the show organisers. We have brought this subject up with several organisers, who have taken note of the points we presented; some organisers already make it a practice to keep a balance of types of traders anyway and didn't need to have this simple concept pointed out. The end result is that some shows will have an overload of beadmakers and some will balance the blend of traders. Just like craft fairs who vet their traders and keep a balance, which benefits the traders, the buyers and the organisers.