Last week I attended Swan Market, a craft market in central Utrecht. This was my first in-person event, so although, I was anxious to have forgotten something or for things to go somehow wrong, it ended up being a nice day with sunny weather, promising sales, and lots of good conversation.
I had made a large batch of A6 postcard frames, as I figured they would be manageable to transport and, as smaller items, could sit somewhere between décor people might buy for their own homes and gifts they might buy for others. Transporting the frames on the bus ended up being a bit of a faff. We had everything packed in cardboard boxes, so although I wanted the display to look as full as possible, I also had to make sure I could actually get there without damaging the frames or myself.
In my preparation, I finished making the frames a bit early, so I spent the last week before the fair putting together the small stand you can see in the photos. It’s made of ash, and I wanted to use it to practise through tenons, which are quite a tricky bit of decorative joinery. You can see them on the vertical support members. I didn’t glue the piece, so I could dismantle it to take it to the fair and back, and it worked really nicely.
Customers were curious about the frames, and I met a good few other makers: some selling at the market, and some it would be great to collaborate with in the future. I’d love to share a stall with artists at some point. I have a few postcards that I put together for these events, and while they’re nice, I think having original art on the stall is a bit more in the spirit of this kind of thing.
I’d also like to make and include something a bit more tactile. We were next to a toy stand, and they had people running over all day to play with their items. I’ve been looking at “devil’s knot” wood puzzles, which could be a fun thing to make and offer a few of on the stand.
Attending craft fairs had been a long-term goal in setting up Dichterswijk Lijsten, and was part of the reason I wanted to move beyond custom work and start putting products together in the first place. So getting there felt like a nice end to that arc. Having attended one fair, and having done the work of preparing for it, also takes a lot of uncertainty out of attending more in the future.
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