Price of eggs

[Webb Willmott]

I’m wondering if practice eggs are sold at craft fairs and how much the sell for. Or do you sell a bowl with eggs in it for a higher dollar or help the sale.

 

[Neil S]

Most of the galleries I've sold my work through over the years has a bowl near the cash register with an assortment of turned eggs in it. Occasionally one of my bowls has been commandeered for that. I don't know if that has helped egg sales, but it didn't help sell the bowl! ...

 

[John K Jordan]

I’m wondering if practice eggs are sold at craft fairs and how much the sell for. Or do you sell a bowl with eggs in it for a higher dollar or help the sale.

I give up: what's a practice egg?

I've turned a lot of eggs but they didn't take much practice, just a steady hand.


Once when I visited Graeme Priddle he took me over to the gallery where some of his stuff was displayed. He checked a bowl full of turned eggs to see how many had sold. Selling the eggs, not the bowl or the bowl full of eggs. I didn't look to see how the eggs were priced. I think he turned eggs since they were fun.

I do know of a small market for turned eggs - as decoy eggs to get certain birds to nest and lay their eggs in certain places. I've turned wooden guinea and peafowl eggs for decoys. However, commercial wooden decoy eggs are readily available and quite inexpensive. Just check Amazon.

 

[Kirk Amidon]

John has an interesting comment about commercial eggs. There is no way any of us can compete with that sort of thing, nor should we. We had a couple over a year or two ago, sitting around a large live edge table I made. She inquired about my making one for her. I considered it for a moment, and asked what she thought it would be worth to her. The number she gave was in line with IKEA or such, when I told her that just the wood for the top was 2x that, she flipped. The point is that in some ways, we are not selling the steak, but are selling the sizzle. What is the back story of the turner and of the piece of wood used? A good story, told well will add value for many customers, and even then the same story is worth different amounts at a craft sale, vs an art gallery.

 

[John K Jordan]

I think the value in hand turned wooden eggs is in the figure and color of the wood - burl, B&W ebony, deep chatoyance, ambrosia maple plus embellishment, hand coloring, etc.

A woman in our club did a demo on embellishment and asked me to bring a plain egg from light wood. I have her delicately woodburned egg on my shelf of honor. A friend gave me a couple of ornaments - plain wood, hollowed nicely, but incredibly colored and decorated with that paint that leaves little raised bumps (forgot the name). Also displayed in a place of honor!

JKJ

 

[Roger Wiegand]

Eggs are wonderful warm up/practice pieces. I think I’ve probably made more money by warming up my skew making an egg and not wrecking a bigger piece of wood with a catch than by selling the eggs. The craft shop folks I deal with like them and price them at about 8 bucks for plain and 12 for more exotic wood— dyed curly maple in bright colors counts as exotic.

Buffing with wax makes them feel very attractive, helping sales, but adds considerably to the time to make one.

Could be the highest profit margin thing I make on a dollars per minute of work basis.

Gets me to regularly practice going both left and right with the skew.

 

[John K Jordan]

Gets me to regularly practice going both left and right with the skew.

Great idea!

And I have people practice left and right both on spindles with and without switching hands, and with different skews - also good practice.

JKJ