"Handcarving" - marketing issues

[chuckt]

Ok - so I know this topic has been somewhat beat to death (there have been several threads going on lately along with Lynn's "Rules" thread) and perhap many or even most of you are sick of it. If you're one of these - please feel free to skip this thread, but I hope you'll hear me out.

This past weekend at my church (Catholic) our pastor had invited someone to speak to the parish at the conclusion of mass about Christian's in Bethlehem in the holy land. He described the difficulty in living as a religious minority in the birthplace of Christ. He also went on to describe the livelihood that his family and many others depend on . . . "hand carved treasures - art work in Olive wood from the Holy Land." He invited everyone over to the school gym after mass to see their collection and learn more.

Needless to say - this got my attention and so my mom & dad (who were visiting) and my wife & kids went over to check it out. They had a LONG line of about 100 or so who made their way along the tables (about 100 linear feet worth) of carvings - most all of which were religious themes - Madonna's, Nativities, Noahs Arks, Crucifixes, Praying Hands, Christmas Ornaments etc.

The spiel was that his 85 yo father was the primary artisan but that his family for uncounted generations had been Bethlehem wood carving artists. Each piece was meticulously "handcarved" olive wood direct from the holy land and ranged in price from $65 for small (6" to 8" tall figurines) to $2000 for a fairly large Nativity set.

Now - they WERE beautiful. The wood was really nicely grained and finished. They pulled the heartstrings to "help their family and a Christian presence" survive in the holy land by purchasing some items. They were REALLY nice and sincere. And people BOUGHT! Including my mom and wife - though we kept them small. Now I liked some of the designs and not having time at that point to fully research the situation I looked that other way and let it all pass however . . .

There were many items that looked practically identical, and I could see typical Foredom/Dremel type tool markings so I knew full well that they were power carved. So my wife asks the gentleman (NOT at my prompting either) - "Were these 'handcarved'?" To which he responded "Yes". She then asked - "Using chisels and gouges or power tools?" He said, "these were hand carved using hand tools and each piece is a unique work of art." She pressed: "Did they use power tools?" to which he finally conceded that yes "in order to speed the process some power tools were used." My wife asked if they ran out of something she liked could she get another? The response was oh yes we have LOT's of each item. Hmmm - unique works of art eh?

So - today I Googled Bethlehem, Olive, Wood carving. Here is an example of what I found: Bethlehem Olive Wood

Now this is not necessarily the same company (I don't recall the name at the moment) as the one who came to my church, and leaving aside the notion that they are pulling on American's heartstrings and religious values to sell product . . . this very page is the page that offers "custom duplicating" of roughouts.

So to me - all of this speaks of snake oil salesmen who are out to make a buck. They don't want to get into issues of ethics in terms of defining "hand carved" - they just know that gullible people seem to value it as a concept and will pay more for it. No matter that each piece has no real gouge markings to indicate that it was actually "hand carved" or that at the very least they weren't duplicarved via machine but used power tools actually guided by "hand".

Now, in the end - my wife and mom were happy with their purchases and I actually liked one of them very much so I had no problem paying the money. I truly hope it is going to help a family from Bethlehem that actually needs it. But I suspect the reality is likely different.

I know this same issue concerns craftpeople at juried craft shows all over the country that try to promote truly unique artisan designed and created works of art. Some of these booths you can just tell are importing mass produced items and trying to pass them off as unique "hand crafts". People are gullible and eventually this type of things comes to hurt everyone as people who've overpayed and gotten burned no longer trust the work and word of genuine artists & craftspeople.

THAT is why this is an issue. For the majority of hobby carvers who are only having fun or who don't depend on carving for their income - then yeah - these issues seem like no big deal. But for those that are trying to create works of art with integrity and compete for ever more limited disposable income $$ - I can see why these become serious issues indeed and attempt to hold up some standards against which the public should judge carvings.

I mean no direct attack on the owners or works of the above linked site, but I do find their verbiage to be possibly misleading.

ChuckT

[Simplyme]

I agree that he was trying to mislead everyone and I do not think this is fair. I myself a couple of weeks ago would not of known what to look for in a carving. I'm glad i'm a little wiser now.

[chuckt]

btw - just as an add on to this situation, I saw a very similar process in action when I went to India on business a few years ago. I took a side trip to Agra and the Taj Mahal (awesome btw) with a few colleagues. We had a company provided guide who took us to see the "workshops" and galleries of local "artisans". The workshops displayed poor locals working by hand using very crude tools to create persian rugs, carvings, and inlaid semiprecious stone tables coasters & pictures. There was a lot of pressure to buy. My friend ended up buying a 9'x12' rug that started off being $3500. He was a pretty good haggler and eventually (almost 2 hours later) got them down to $1200. You should have heard the shop owner trying to guilt him into higher prices. Meanwhile - you know that around the corner somewhere was a modern factory churning these things out.

Call me jaded but to me - the same process is at work here. And this is why people may be giving others a hard time about "hand carved" vs power tools, single block vs add ons etc. People feel like they are being lied to and cheated with these things. NOT that they actually are, but that's the underlying fear and suspicion. So for artists who use these tools and methods you have to communicate to overcome those fears and educate as to the real value of your work. Fair - not really, but that's life.

ChuckT

[Lynn O. Doughty]

Hey....I've got some of those olive wood camels setting on my shelf we picked up when we were in Lebanon years ago. Are you tellimg me that they're not works of art? Caveat emptor!

[MelNM]

They sell those carvings in every mall here at Christmas and I have seen them in other ones around the state.

They didn't tell us how they were carved and I didn't ask, but my wife bought two. But I had already assumed they were using some kind of duplicator to do them, because I saw a lot of the same carvings being sold. Sad he couldn't be more up front when he was at your church, people would have still bought.

Thanks for the website Chuck, I'm thinking of buying some of the olive wood to do some carving on.

Carpe Dium (Couldn't resist Lynn)
Mel

[Keoma]

This is very sad to me. Your whole church, granted they may have found a lovely treasure, sounds to me to have been treated like so many kind hearted fish in a well meant barrel.
I am a power carver and a traditional carver, I am honest about it. Peopel do want to know-hell I want to know!
This last fest was quite hard. I had to compete with the "Hand Carved" stuff from Bali and other such places, everyone has a "help These People" or "feed Theese children" sign on there booths. BUT the funny thing is the buddha I had in my hands from Bali was the same buddha as the one 2 tents down...from Guatemala...
It reminds me a lot of business that put signs in there business windows that say "We support Our Troops" so people will come in. (((The one on the local bar really pisses me off))) It's a sad marketing strategy, whats sadder is that it works.
I have to agree with you that I highly doubt all the proceeds help the families and people that they say they do.

[gene-messer]

Chuck .. I have seen these type of carvings for years in our malls down here at Christmas and I was told they were hand carved in the Holy Land also .. But you could look at them and tell they were duplicates .. But to the untrained eye .. how would anyone know .. unless their carvers themselves ..

I have seen the same thing done at such stores as Hobby Lobby and other craft stores claiming hand carved .. But you can see their not because their all the same ..


But lets ask ourself .. Unless your a carver and appreciate the work that goes into a hand carved piece .. why should the public care or know any better ? The price is what their most concerned about .. So competeing with manfactured retailers even if they stretch the truth some is a loss cause for the craftsman .. Look at Walmart .. how do you think they got where they are ? .. Imported trinkets of all kind .. and the people love them ..

Unless you have a collector or someone who knows true craftsmanship .. your going to be beat out by foreign wooden figures that cost a third of what it cost us to produce them .. check out e- bay and see the hundreds of over seas carvings available ..

The discussion is a great one Chuck and thank you for the warning .. but I remember a friend of mine who was a good painter and auctioned off his painting .. but was beat out in price by one of those dreadful black velvet paintings .. who can figure it ..

Gene

[Jim Arnold]

The owner of the factory mentioned in the website above is a man by the name of Darwin Hasn. The works are mass-produced in factories, not necessarily his or in Bethelem either, palestinian chamber of commerce laws state that if 35% of the material used in a given product is from the West Bank or Gaza they can call it "Made in the Holy Land". The businesses and companies you see listed are fronts for concerns in the area trying to make a buck, and you can't fault them for that, some even have 'factories' and you can take tours of the these 'factories' to the rooms where artists are 'carving' the works...some even say "because these works are hand-carved entirely from memory by the individual artists, NO TWO ARE EXACTLY ALIKE", Chuck already commented on that issue. Most of that stuff you see in malls at Christmas time comes from factories located in Jordan. They use Bethlehem as their point of origin, not so much because of the religious connection (and they work that angle REALLY well!!!) but because of the world trying to help the region out thinking that if there is corporate investment in the area it will lead to jobs (of every kind), which will lead to peace in that area, so people like Darwin Hasn flock to that area to grab some of the foreign investment cash. That you SEE so much of it, is because of our own government, the US Department of Commerce more specifically, some of the info. here I got from a website titled, and you will love this,...BUYUS.gov, LOL,LOL.

Hand-made?..no way!
Made in the Holy Land?...yes, if you consider Jordan the Holy land,... No, if you're thinking Bethlehem.

A few years back I did a lot of shows on the mall circuit. You've all seen the religious stuff we're talking about here, remember the wooden military and commercial aircraft and military vehicle models, they had some trucks and trains too? Those are hand-manufactured!!! By 8,9, and 10 year old kids working 11-14 hour days in deplorable conditions in India and in Southeast Asia for an average of about 2-3 pennies/ hour. I told the show manager I wasn't doing any more of their shows unless they quit supporting the 'slave trade', to which she replied "they do more shows than you...Bye-Bye", so I stepped on (I mean over) her head and talked to the owners of the promotion company who didn't care either. Haven't done a mall show since (because of that and other reasons). I thought it was funny that they had a competely realistic and accurate V-22 Fighter model for sale before the American public even knew the US AirForce was building one. I even pleaded a case, fully supported by research of the working conditions these kids are forced to endure, factory names and locations, contact names, everything, to Roger Moore, the rotund muck-raking "investigative journalist". he didn't care either. These "companies" and products are not going to go away, with a gullible un-informed buying public, together with places like the World's largest flea market (aka E-bay) and Walmart, those people are here to stay. Like Gene just mentioned people only care about price,
and as Lynn said...buyer beware!

jim

[AlArchie]

It ain't just these foreign "carvers" that use this mass produced tactic. Several years ago a friend suggested I contact the folks at Bass Pro and Cabellas to see about selling some of my fish carvings, as they had seen some hand carved fish there. Soooooo, next time down that way I stopped in. This may ruffle a few feathers, or scrape a few scales, if you wish, but there were many examples of "carved" fish, all over the store. Each and every one actually done in wood, with exactly the same power carving marks under almost identical paint jobs. All advertized as done by a group of carvers from Montanna. And they actually were, but had been mass produced from a master carving on a high end duplicator. They were selling for between 300 and 500 bucks. It's impossible to compete individually in that particular market.

Again, I won't short them for ingenuity in manufacturing or marketing......hey they gotta make a living too, and I do this as a hobby, but those are NOT "carvings", but "CNC machinings" or some other reproductvely processessed pieces.

At least they weren't hawking this stuff off as "help some pour soul" by buying his (their) stuff. And they were pretty darn good at that!

Al

[Keoma]

It akmost makes me feel guilty for wanting one of those new fangled Craftsman Carvers...