Encourage and Support Snobbery

 For argument’s sake let’s say, Craft is: 

Art that serves a “practical mundane function”  and therefore does not need to argue it’s validity or purpose.Snobbery: the elevation of craft as an expression of cultural identity.Snobbery from this moment forward is to mean the act of elevating and supporting craft.

At somewhat more than a half century in age, I like to tell people, “I’m getting old and I’m happy about it.” I’ve developed tastes, And I like to celebrate having a lot of different life experiences and the lessons that go with them. One of the things that I find great happiness in is patronizing people that do what they love, love what they do and produce a consistently excellent product because of that love. 

Because of my love for what artisan create, I’m rarely hip to what’s popular, but trendy people in Detroit follow the people I spend my leisure time with. I hang out in the workplaces of curators, nerds, artists, artisans and experts in their fields. I truly enjoy watching them do their work. Their prestidigitation is most magical.  

Become a vested Patron 

However, while everyone capable of self expression is an artist, snobs are not often artisan, but instead, they are dilettantes, dabblers, that have through experience, gained a greater appreciation for crafters’ spiritual investment and sacrifice. Patrons are a most important level of consumer, especially for those whose output is limited by the common needs of the human body and an uncompromising need to remain immersed in the process. Patrons of the arts are enabler of artists. Patrons are few and far between in this city and quite possibly in the US.  Because patrons are knowledgeable, passionate and loyal to their artists and their artists’ ability to produce, consistently, prolifically and with the passion that makes their work desirable. Patrons are often the creative’s best representative next to the art itself.
Support small batch brewers, producers of handicrafts, Garde manger, rare vinyl records, gold and silversmiths, cult wine vintners, perfumeries, gardeners, small theater.  In sort, find something that captivates your interests and become passionate about it, especially sharing your love for it. In that you help to secure the availability of the things you love.

If you are able to employ block chain or crypto-currencies to facilitate their ability to fulfill your desire…

...More power to you. Thanks for reaching escape velocity from the commerce of your recent ancestors. Now, the whole concept of Attend to the Luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves, works in the exact same manner. I am going to break it down for my own sake. 

True luxury products are rarely mass production items, but instead handcrafted, bespoke, early iterations of things before they go through the range of copied versions limited edition (often signed, numbered and authenticated), then open runs and then bootlegged or counterfeit versions. In short prototypes. Most artists like myself can only hope to create something and to be credited on the bootleg version of a mass produced expression. Understanding one thing, all the copies and fakes almost never devalue the original and in fact, because of the popularity of the copies can in many cases raise the asking price for the original for a time. But like I mentioned earlier, consumers are attracted to shiny things and will consistently migrate to that novel item or experience. Only the most valuable of customers immerse themselves into anything, let alone an artist’s or artisan’s life’s passion.

The reason for this is a vestigial holdover biological imperative from our foraging, hunter gatherer ancestors: Fish swimming close to the surface, in shallow fast moving streams glitter in the sunlight. To catch them and secure a great source of protein is a matter of simply finding the right place and most comfortable technique for scooping them out of the water and tossing them ashore.  

After that, everything else is commerce, literally and figuratively. 

Creating a common value for the merchant.
Because two of my favorite tools as an artist are string and chalk, I’m using one of the most common carpenter’s tools as my example. There is no damned good reason for anyone to spend upwards of a hundred dollars for a chalk line reel. You can buy one at any hardware or department store for less than $5 USD, in 2018 dollars. But for the serious artisan crafter  a hand carved antique line reel may hold some “mystic resonance”, magical meaning, something that elevates it beyond the mundane utilitarian nature of its purpose. Which for the common individual is nothing, and for the average trades person not much more than nothing, maybe it might ascend to “Woah! That’s cool”.

When most of us think commerce, our ceiling audience is usually our parallel, “Woah! That’s cool! Gimme that! How much?” Even when we think as sellers of things our target market is rarely more than a one or two degree lateral shift away from being self serving.

 
But a true merchant is a specialist. They know their hairs on the elephant often in very esoteric terms, in ways that everyday consumers do not have a desire to know. In ways that make it better for the consumer, for the merchant to act as an ambassador. Because while they are still focused on the deal, like a consumer, they have a mine and heart for the artist. Because the deal is their form of art.Merchants tend to make very good patrons, almost as good and generally not as evil as lawyers, churches, bankers and monarchies. They tend to weaponize creativity.

The best create curatorial methods of maintaining the integrity of a product as a cultural pathway. Examples: Guinness Beer, is supposedly only brewed made from the waters of one source…Diane Hair brushes with the stamp of approval of the Crown. Take it all the way down to the bake sell best in show kind of thing.

Now Martha’s recipe is the standard by which the cake shop has to compete with.