An Etsy Post
My sisters Ann, Ellen and Susan, as well my niece Nicole go up to Baltimore every year in a February-ish season for the Baltimore Craft Show (properly the American Craft Council Show Baltimore; there are others across the country Atlanta, San Francisco :
American Craft Council) I have a rough idea of the thing though I've never been. The Baltimore craft show: like an Etsy you can walk through. On occasion I've even gone over to the Torpedo Factory (no torpedos involved currently) aka Torpedo Factory Art Center. Which lies broadly, even thickly along the continuum from arts & crafts through to Art. It facilitates a romanticized vision of the creative lifestyle I find I need to believe in sometimes.
Some people like their craftisomes new, and others aged. I appreciate, certainly, forms and objects that have survived time, I feel implicated in that even; however, I would not be set against an understanding of antique as simply a upscale word that means anti-new. There may be no intrinsic value in old. I find flea markets and yard sales a great temptation, as much for the bricolage time machine aspect as for anything. I find I like the Shorpy Archive as well. But I would probably pass by any place calling itself "antique" this or that, unless I felt that by use of the word they were simply putting on airs and actually had good honest junk, the tchotchke of generations, on their shelves.
Online this territory is covered by eBay or Craig's list, neither of which I spend much time haunting. Trân has discovered that while she gets pennies on the dollar selling back her old textbooks in the campus bookstore, she can get list for them on eBay. This only confirms certain thoughts I have concerning eBay.
What is Etsy in this mix,
Etsy :: Your place to buy and sell all things handmade? From their own description it is the "new economy" and a ethos of handmade made manifest. The pseudo night-human-activity map they have up (a clever and very Etsy idea)
Etsy :: About shows Etsy is currently concentrated in the eastern and west coast United States, but surprisingly also England and Scotland which never struck me as being Arts, Crafts, or cottage industry sorts of places. Etsy's trade is the new: a democratic neighborly peer market in craftiness. Objects not only warm from the hand that made them, but of the ideas that inspired them. They facilitate sales of jewelry, wearables home furnishings and home accents. All in a light minimalist interface replicating individual booths and exhibition tables in as many web 2.0 nodes. Wikipedia indicates the current CEO, Maria Thomas, apparently is a former NPR executive,
Etsy - Wikipedia. Over the past few months I've been asking around to see who's heard of Esty. I first learned of it through Mir's Dim Sum Diaries weblog. MetaFilter also turns up with Etsy-centric threads now and again (there is even a node for MiFi Etsians
Shops by MeFites | MetaFilter) It took reading about it a couple of times before I really caught on to what it was. My sister Ann had heard of it - through someone at her office. Of course, she is the premiere Baltimore Craft Show attendee in the family. My sister Susan had not. Few I spoke to had heard of it, or knew much about it. No men, I made inquires to, had heard of it at all. Not one. "Possibly not a guy thing," I entered into my small pocket notebook at this point. A co-worker, my friend Nina had. Nina belongs to a crocheting circle that formed at the library, back in the spring. They meet once a week or so. I think Trân was participating in this as well during the summer, but she is back to taking classes now and lunch belongs to the textbooks. What Nina was working on was very nice. I told her so and added that she could probably sell her stuff on Etsy. "Oh no," she exclaimed gesturing at her work station screen then snapping a finger at the mouse to shake off the screen saver and show me: "Etsy is where we go to get our ideas." While I haven't bought anything off Etsy yet I wouldn't say I won't.
Being aware of Etsy at all is probably something of an outlier experience for me. As well I am passing out of the demographic that notices things at all. I'm on the fence about fighting my way back in. My money and yearnings are no longer of statistical significance to marketeers. People my age don't buy what they want to sell. We don't respond reliably enough to advertising to make it worthwhile they're trying. They may suspect we have money, but they know better than to try to get it by talking to us. At last I am at liberty not to care unless I actually do care.
11:49:18 PM  ;;
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