vince pitelka on mon 10 dec 01
Dale wrote:
"I was helping bring in the food and noticed a handsome tall stoneware
pitcher on the counter. Raising and turning it over to see the signature of
the maker, I dumped the contents of the pitcher filled with ice tea on the
floor in front of everyone. Man! I turned all shades of copper red!"
In Blue Lake, California we had a gallery/showroom in our house, and twice a
year we did big studio sales, inviting about 1200 people. The last night
before the sale was always a mad rush, and as we organized and priced the
wares we were invariably drinking coffee out of my mugs. Originally I
preferred to put the price tags on the bottoms of wares in order to avoid
contaminating the design on the exposed surface. The problem is that some
of us would invariably leave our partially-filled coffee mugs on the shelves
as we finished setup. The next day during the sale some poor hapless soul
would pick up the mug and turn it over to check the price, and pour cold
stale coffee all over themselves, someone else, or the shelves of pottery.
We would appologize profusely when this happened, and after a season or two
it finally penetrated our thick skulls that we should just go ahead and make
the price tags visible, so that the customers did not need to turn the
vessel upside down to check the price, and so that we could make a quick
pass through the showroom before the sale began, on the lookout for the mugs
without price tags, which often contained coffee dregs.
Best wishes -
- Vince
Vince Pitelka
Appalachian Center for Crafts
Tennessee Technological University
1560 Craft Center Drive, Smithville TN 37166
Home - vpitelka@dtccom.net
615/597-5376
Work - wpitelka@tntech.edu
615/597-6801 ext. 111, fax 615/597-6803
http://www.craftcenter.tntech.edu/
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