The right price at the right place

Mostly we are very excited to present our third (!) exhibition of jewellery in the Swedish church. During our visits at the many exhibitions last year, we noticed the lack of red dots. Mariam Unger made it clear in her speech last year at the Pinakothek, that jewellery collectors are a dying specie . But we feel very much alive - both as collectors and makers.

Visiting Schmuck for the first time can be almost overwhelming. We read this confession in a blog after the events:
Still recovering from the shock and awe of contemporary international jewellery, totally mind blowing. Not only in the works, but the presentation of them. Problem is, the market is so flooded by these amazing pieces that they have become the norm - each competing with the thousands of others for precedence and attention. Like horror films, nerve ending eventually become numb to the sensation. The use of non-traditional materials does not seem to be an issue for these buyers or makers; the cheapest piece that I saw was priced at three hundred euros and it was made of treated leather.


Ring by Sanna Svedestedt, 300 €

The ring mentioned by the jewellery student and blogger Melanie Archer was one of Sanna’s pieces. 300€ is not a “cheap” piece of jewellery and most of the students visiting our latest exhibitions would not even consider buying something in that price range. How does that effect the way they experience the pieces? How do we set the price and who do we expect to wear our work?

For ignoble we decided for a hands on approach. We set up some rules for ourselves: all artist will make jewellery with four different price tags. Calculated on a fixed hour fee of 50 euros/hour* we have made pieces at the following levels:

2000 € – One exclusive piece.
600 € – Two one of a kind pieces.
200 € – Six pieces, similar but with some variations.
35 € – Unnumbered edition of multiples.


Brooches by Hanna Liljenberg. 200 €/each.


A higher price gives you a one of a kind jewellery piece and in the lower price range there are multiples of similar objects. Our main purpose is to make as many of (ig)noble’s visitors as possible, feel as they are our target - as if we built this exhibition for them.


Bracelet by Karin Roy Andersson. 600 €.

Who is a collector nowadays? We hope that you will come an visit us for a golden opportunity to fill some holes in your jewellery box.

* For a Swedish artist, 50 € /hour equals about 25 € /hour after taxes and social charges (VAT not included).
KRO/KIF** recommends Swedish self employed artists to invoice 83 €/hour for short term production, project based work and artistic consulting. As a monthly salary they also recommend 4842 € before tax and social charges (VAT not included). That can be translated into 30 € / hour before taxes. For this experiment we decided to level these sums to 50 € / hour. We would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

** KRO/KIF is the Swedish Artists’ National Association and The Association of Swedish Craftsmen and Industrial Designers.
 

About the author

Diagonal is a collaboration between Karin Roy Andersson & Sanna Svedestedt. Our focus is to promote contemporary art jewellery. With this blog we share our views & thoughts to take you with us through the ups & downs of our jewellery adventures.

www.diagonalartprojects.com