With the Spring craft fair season starting up, I have been working on my market table setup. It’s an ever-evolving project and varies between the Spring and holiday fairs. I make and sell a lot of ornaments in the December markets, so my seasonal displays are very different.
The Spring setup is the more challenging one for me because much of my work is essentially the same color. I usually finish pieces to preserve the natural color of the wood, and on their own or in small groups, my pieces work well as objects of interest. When displayed on my market table, they blend together in color and tone, diminishing their impact. To counter this, I use wood blocks for height, trays to designate areas and bowl stands to position bowls upright to showcase their diameters and interiors.
I could have used some store-bought picture display stands, but I like the handmade wooden object approach. What I came up with is a block with holes near the four corners with long pegs in the back and short ones in the front. With scrap wood and dowels, they come together pretty quickly. I don’t even glue the dowels in place, which allows for easy reconfiguration.
This task of figuring out how to set up my market table has led me to think more broadly about how to display my work in the home, and how my customers might display my work in their homes for it to be used and enjoyed.
One of the tenets of Marie Kondo’s Spark Joy philosophy says that if an object sparks joy for you, then you should display it in your home so that you can feel joy when you see it in your everyday life.
With that in mind, I have made a hanging display for a trio of utensils. I made one for a friend and one to keep. It hangs in my dining room and the spoons are some of my earliest carvings.
One of my favorite display stands that I ever made was a simple single spoon holder. Its purpose is to keep a cooking spoon easily accessible on the countertop while cooking. I want to make more of these in the future where the stand and the spoon complement each other.
Spring market schedule:
April 21, I’ll be at Honeybee Grove Flower Farm
May 4 and 5, I’ll be at Modern Makers Market
May 11, I’ll be at the Mother’s YAY! Market
Workshops:
This summer, I’m going to be teaching a couple workshops at Brookfield Craft Center in Brookfield, CT on how to make a wooden bud vase. Look for me at their Open House on May 18 demonstrating the lathe and answering all your questions.
If you can’t make any of those dates, you can request to schedule a private class.