Being your own business owner, accountant, manager and sole employee can be an overwhelming proposition. All the decisions to be made, you have to make yourself; all the responsibility for success or failure rests on your own shoulders; and every day you have to wake up, look in the mirror and find the boss staring right back at you: “So, did you call the bank yesterday?” questions your authoritarian reflection, and with what you could swear is a tinge of accusation. “Did you pay the invoices? Did you order the materials you need? Did you reserve that booth at the upcoming trade show?” — and so on, without even the decency of waiting for the first cup of morning coffee to go down the hatch.
It’s why most people choose to work for someone else; that way, at the end of the work shift, they get to put down their tools, pens or computer keyboards, pack up their briefcases and go home, collecting a steady paycheck week to week and leaving any loose ends to the owners and managers to identify and resolve. For the self-employed artisan, however, there are times when it can border on all work and no play.
“I’m not very much fun to be around in early January when I have to take inventory,” joked Betsy, when I asked whether running her own jewelry business ever interferes with the creative aspect of her design work. “But for the most part, I seem to be able to manage the business end of it pretty well . . . commerce allows me to do what I’m doing, so it’s definitely not my enemy, but while a traditional business person may love the number-crunching, daily-planner side of things, to me, it’s just a means of allowing me to do what I really love to do — and I love being able to sell what I make.”
And what Bensen makes are painstakingly fabricated, carefully detailed pieces of jewelry, starting off with gold or silver sheet and wire, then sawing, hammering and soldering until she gets the shapes she wants, and finally finishing the metal surfaces with textural processes that involve filing, sanding and oxidizing.
“I rarely cast my metals,” she replied, in response to a question about which fabrication processes she uses (“Casting, turning, machining, molding? Pretend I know what any of those are,” I said). “I prefer hands-on manipulation. I think people who purchase from designers such as myself do so because they enjoy seeing the hand of the maker on a piece of jewelry.”
Freshwater pearl and sterling silver earrings with a hand-textured finish
And while the majority of Betsy’s work is one-of-a-kind, she did recently run a series of cast silver birdhouse earrings, but finished them each by hand so that no two were exactly alike. The series was popular and sold out quickly, yet the price of silver has since skyrocketed from $4 an ounce to over $20 an ounce, making them prohibitively expensive to produce again, even though she still receives requests (the latest request being from moi).
“There’s a limit to how much you can charge for silver,” she explained, “even though the amount of labor going into the piece is the same. And gold at $1200 an ounce is certainly not the greatest when you have to buy the stuff to make a living — though in relation to the price of gold, silver is starting to look like a bargain.”
Unfortunately, the ever volatile market price of precious metals is another one of those things you have to think about when you’re your own boss, especially when the income you earn plays an important part in paying the family bills.
Stella Layton, chief executive of Cookson Gold (a manufacturer and supplier to the jewelry trade), believes that soaring gold prices have caused a psychological shift among consumers from gold to silver, especially among those who shop for the kind of accessible handcrafted jewelry that indie designers like Bensen produce.
“For the middle and bottom market, price points are key, and there has already been a massive shift to silver and clearly this will continue with a high gold price,” Layton noted, in an interview with Jeweler.com.
Bensen happens to agree. “I’ve always worked in both gold and silver, and I love using them together in pieces,” she said. “But I try to keep my pieces affordable. For instance, when I make a gold bezel, I’ll fabricate the back of it in sterling. I do love silver, and am finding myself using it more these days as a result of the high gold prices.”
Petroglyph earring in sterling silver
But what about custom pieces, I wondered — how much of Bensen’s workload is special order, and has that been negatively affected by rising metal costs and the continued economic recession?
“I probably do about 20% of my work in custom orders; I haven’t really noticed an increase, but I haven’t noticed a decrease, either,” Betsy answered. And does she enjoy doing custom work as much as creating pieces entirely on her own? “It’s a nice balance,” she admitted, stating that most of her customers give her quite a bit of freedom in the custom design process. “But it’s still a welcome challenge coming up with something that fits what they’re looking for.”
And how about collaborations? Lately, the fashion world has been abuzz with news of designer fast-fashion collaborations as a means of increasing public awareness, and I asked Betsy if she felt she could benefit from an association with a fashion brand.
“I had a wonderful collaboration a couple of years ago with a metal sculptor,” she said. “We built a 6 foot tall metal piece that went on display at the Contemporary Crafts Museum and Gallery . . . (but) I’m not sure about being connected with the fashion industry. That makes me think of lots and lots of production work, and I prefer taking the time to do well crafted, one of a kind pieces.”
She went on to note that she’d been approached in the past by a large department store chain, but realized that mass exposure was not what she wanted, even though it might mean a solid increase in revenue. “I want my pieces to be limited production and somewhat special,” she stated firmly, then quickly added, “and I don’t want to be working like a crazy person!”
Which seems to nicely sum up Bensen’s work as a whole: special, limited-edition, slow-crafted and decidedly non-crazy.
Another view of the Petroglyphs
As a solo artist, Betsy spends a lot of time alone working in her studio (which she thoroughly enjoys, she told me), but over the years has become more and more accustomed to meeting customers at art fairs, talking with them over the telephone and communicating with them online, to such an extent that she now finds her customers are a factor in her creation process. She’s quick to say that she’s definitely her own artist, and that first and foremost, she has to personally enjoy what she’s working on, but the real test is finding that elusive balance between her creative impulses and what excites her clients.
“I thought I had to be making jewelry as fast as I possibly could and find ways to churn out work in order to be successful, but I’m not trying to be all things to all people, so I’ve learned to take my time,” she said, sounding for all the world like a former wild-eyed bohemian who’s broken through personal barriers to reach the finish line of some Zen-Buddhist ‘Enlightenment Through Action’ type relay race (which is all conjecture on my part, but certainly fun to write!). “I decided I wanted to produce pieces that are valued for their careful attention to detail, that would keep me engaged and enjoying the process, because that’s the really satisfying part. And when I make a sale, I can go buy more metal and create something new to be discovered!”
*NOTE: Wait, did I say Zen-Buddhist? Bah! Make that Master Zen-Buddhist! Only without the Buddhism . . . or the inconvenient emphasis on ceaseless meditation. After all, it would be a tad risky to lose one’s self in meditation while sawing away at a sheet of metal, n’est-ce pas?
Though designers and indie producers like Betsy do have one pressing concern, and it’s a valid one. Bensen’s indie designer peer Lois of 13threads stated in an interview with Makers Online that “My concern is that this current move towards the label ‘handmade’ becomes just another marketing tool, and that the definition of handmade becomes blurry. Suddenly, a jumper which was mass-produced in a factory has the label ‘handmade’ because the buttons were sewn on by hand.”
*NOTE 2: Dana Thomas addresses this very blurring of labels (among other eye-opening topics) in ‘Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster‘.
But other than that, “It’s a very happy business,” Bensen declared, and who could disagree? She likes her job, she feels good about the finished jewelry items that leave her studio, and there are people out there in the world who continue to gravitate to these intriguing, handmade works that seem like a creative way of signing “Betsy Bensen” into the ether — her own special, limited-edition, slow-crafted and decidedly non-crazy signature.
***Betsy Bensen’s e-shop can be found at the following link: Betsy on Etsy
*ADDENDUM: You can read Part One of my interview with Betsy here: The Artisan Series: Betsy Bensen (Part 1)
