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I certainly would but have had a time crunch all afternoon with subs on our house projects.
I have marked your post and will see what tomorrow afternoon brings. Have to meet the graders up at the lots at 7:30 am and unsure when I will get back. But I would like to post a few observations.
Those dot like marks are not repro halftone dots. That is the medium being deposited on the high surface of the canvas knuckles. The over under weave [weft and waf] of the fabric. Those may be deposited by use of a dry brush technique or a hard marking surface material such as charcoal or conte’ crayon [which is more likely on canvass] or it is the dry brush being pulled over the knuckles.
I will address the back and more tomorrow or the next day.
Too bad Jay, you are not close by, I have 7 or 8 large hard wood trees that were in the house box that had to come out. Good firewood. Maybe I can give it away on Craigslist or something.
mc at mdcgfa
DT Good to know. I use the Boery for our 50# brown kraft rolls which i wrap some items with or use for stiff dunnage-filler. I also buy our cut lighter weight newsprint from them. Yes the have very good prices but oddly enough I have not priced their boxes. I just did my first quarter shipping supply inventory. Before I do a fill in order from Staples, I will cross reference them.
Who knows, may some day we could start a thread on the Forum where we all just post sources and prices for items we all use. I know Ryann has a “resources” section here but maybe just a long list of sources and when ever we find a source that is ceaper than the one posted, the more expensive source gets replaced. Items on Sale would not count. Just long term, hard core, low ball prices from sources for everything, newsprint, bubble wrap, peanuts, reinforced tape, etc., etc.
But now that I think about it many sellers, as do I, like to single source for as much as I can so I don’t have to place a bunch of separate orders. Oh, well an idea.
But the Boxery is a very good source. And yes we too have a Costco Business Membership which has a section of supplies for business owners on their online website.
mike at MDCGFA
Good idea Inglewood. Being in the larger format printing business for years we bought a lot of boxes from a local converter, but they had some minimums and forget exactly what they were, but I will check around the area and see if their are any converters close by.
I also like to use nice, new, plain, generic boxes. Many found boxes in dumpster have been shipped in already and are scuffed up and in many cases the wall integrity has been compromised due to weight ebing stacked on top of them and mositure absorbtion. You being in the industry, know what I mean. The crush strength of a box is lessened when several heavier boxes have been riding across country in a truck. And the boxes from China, which dumpsters behind dept. stores are full of really suck and most have come over in cargo containers.
I also am not a big fan of the Ebay tape. I still say it makes boxes look like a “jack in the box” or circus box. Not very professional looking and is avery thin mil-gauge tape as compared to the Heavy Duty clear tape we box with. But free is free. But I only use the clear tape for our Etsy Sales.
mike at MDCGFA
I used to buy from Uline but then they started charging a min. of $30 for shipping or if you came down to pick them up. They are 6 miles up the road from us. The reason they said is they wanted to cut down on the local pick-up traffic coming into the truck loading area because it was a traffic congestion-safety hazard. Baloney.
But now I ask you, compare the Uline prices, even if you pick them up with Staples and see if you see what I saw or see. Think you may be surprised. Maybe not.
Worth a comparative look.
Mike at MDCGFA
Jay beat me too my reply. As long as the keywords are relevant and related to the object. On Etsy and Shopify there is a special section for “Tags” which are nothing more than keywords. In fact Etsy wants to to use at least 13 of them, and they can be more than one word. So 20 to 30 Tags – keywords are encouraged. At times we gat a message saying you should try using more tags – key words.
The frowned upon “black hat” tactics are stuffing with unrelated key words to trick someone looking for an item totally unrelated into landing on your site, typing those unrelated key words into a white font color so they can’t be seen or a very small 3 or 4 point size in light grey and tactics like that.
mc at mdcgfa in atl
Boy that’s a thought. My car has been in the shop since before Thanksgiving. Supposedly I will get it back today ?? Maybe and it will be about $1,000. It was super hard to find the cause of why the whole security system kept failing and then the cut off switch kicked in and shut the whole car off dead stride while driving. Then it locked the car up and it would not crank at all.
Makes one think, an electric car that also drives itself. Just Google your estate sales for the day, plug in the routes and off you go, silently cruising for inventory, letting the car drive itself, while doing research on your phone.
Hhhmmm.. mc
Geoff… One place to check out for boxes that you need to buy. Given that Ebay is down to only a couple of sizes and we use boxes that are not the same size as what Ebay offers and inbetween sizes the USPS offers, check out Staples.com
I know you would think an office supply store would not be an inexpensive place to buy, but when we compared the cost to the sizes that Ebay has dropped out of offering, we found Staples to be 50% or even less than what we got from the Ebay store, way less than Uline and the Lb. Test Burst Stregth is about the same. Large rolls of brown kraft paper is less also.
Check them out and compare. And they usually ship next day and if over a small dollar amount they ship free.
Mike at MDCGFA
Hey TTT: I hear you on doubling the store but I will saw a discussion Jay and I had some time back, maybe years ago, but worth mentioning again. You may already know this also..
That is, by doubling the quantity of items in a store does not necessarily equate to double the income. Back then Jay dicussed the many variables, like increased sold price per item, promoting, having sales, cleaning out old cheap stuff, etc., etc. But one thing most involved in the discussion did seem to agree on was that as a seller increased the quantity of items [inventory increase], that the amount of sales and dollar amount sold seemed to increase more on an alogrythmic curve rather than a linear curve. this discussion also led to Jay & Ryanne and a few others even going so far to open a second store to see if the velocity was quicker and steeper in the early stages of growth.
I had tyracked a years worth of each weeks posting by all the mebers of SL that posted weekly back in 2015 [I think] and the spread sheet I created seemed to support that as stores grew to a certain point the alogrythmic curve almost seemed to flatten out. The steepest accelration in Sales and thus dollars seemed to support Jay’s all time statement of seeing some consistency in [that is a key word there-consistency] at around 500 items. But a “steady stream” of sales started and continued into the 750 ++ mark, which 3 or 4 years later, adjusted for market conditions seems to be more like 1,000 to 1,250 items.
Back then we thought 1,250 would be a good number to see $500 a week “consistently”. After seeing competition kick in, higher fees, lowered discounts, Amazon and it’s impact and just everything that goes along with this online selling world, we have adjusted our target to 2,500 now. So, we would like to go from 1,116 items to as many items over 2,000 as we can get by June of this year. There we think we can see an overall average of $2,000 plus monthly income.
Now Troy has his spread sheet which actually can [somewhat predict] the future needs to equate to future income, but you have to get your numbers in order to input them to use his SS as a guide.
There is one very interesting observation I have seen on the few stores of SL members I track is that I keep seeing about a $1-$1.50 per month income for each item the posters here on SL make in there stores. Now no scientific proof of that by any means but on a monthly bases 1,000 item stores seem to post approx. +/- a thousand it gross monthly sales, 2,500 item stores seems to post about $2,500 per month, J and R store at about 8,500 posts about the same.. that $1.00 to $1.50 per item listed equating to about $8,500 to $12,750 dollars gross per month and as the stores get larger they seem to hover more closely to about the $1.00 per item range.
We thought it was just so strange that each time we did any type of projection on some SL members numbers we kept seeing this correlation to the number of items in their stores. Funny and puzzling. But again just a ton of variables to put a monkey wrench into that observation and nothing more than a statement to ponder. No supporting data to form any kind of an hypothesis on at all.
All and all we are going to put a good hard push on getting 2500 listings in, and these newer items being higher dollar items [we like the $50 mark] and see what happens next year.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Rest, caddy.. Tomatoe, Tomahtoe one in the same.. but what I find interesting is how quickly you found a slew of solds and on Ebay at that.
So, moral is to try to use a main keyword in the Ebay, etsy or Google search box, in this case Tea since they are tea kettle shaped. Then, get that longer list, start adding words to it [econdary keywords] like tea dish, tea bowl, tea holder, then viola tea spoon, then possibly tea bag and there you go.
Searches can be tricky at times, and we groan when we use a major keyword and get back a ton on results. We then know we are not going to scroll through that many listings, so a “manual filtering” process comes next.
Usually narrows it down enough to find out what something is.
Susan and our helpers some times use the Google Voice and Image search which helps also. And using the Google Image search also brings back images from Pinterest.
Mike at MDCGFA in Atl
Oh.. AF.. most hand drawn stone lithography [limestone] are drawn on with either liquid or crayon form of Tusche. It is a wax based product that comes in abottle that can be used like paint on the stone and diluted for various shades and puddling effect or in sqaure crayon sticks or litho crayon pencils of varying hardness to achieve varying gradations of color. All of these are black in color and painted and drawn on the stones.
The reason they are wax is that the process of stone lithography is one of etching the drawn images into the stone surface with acid, then removing the wax images after the etching, the using gum arabic or baulm to cover the non etched areas. Then the stone is flooded with water using a sea sponge and ink hand applied using a roller which will only stick to where the wax once was and which is now the etched raw stone surface.
This whole process has to be done for each color. The stone has to be passed through a hand crank press and reinked after each sheet is printed. A 22 color print [most I have ever done for a client] that was 20×24 in a limited edition of 250 1/250 to 250/250 took 5,500 inkings and 5,500 passes through the press. I can [or used to could in my youth-LOL] re-fresh and re-prep and ink a stone in about 5-10 min. per sheet or about 650 hours or about 4 months with out overtime or weekends.
That same edition in our plant at the time of my retirement could be printed as a Giclee edition, archival everything in about a week with ink refills and substrate replacement [rolls of canvass]
Aaah …. these last posts remind me of being just like back in the University Classroom.. BTW I taught print making [etching, stone lithography, serigraphy [silk screening=out dated name], figure drawing, mechanical drawing and contemporary abstract painting back in my early youth.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Yes AF, this is certainly something to look for and especially in today’s world with the advent of the Giclee. A multi-color high end ink jet printing process. The one we had in our plant had 26 Piezo ink jet nozzles that were connected to 26 1-gallon containers of color. So, we could apply 26 colors per pass of the print head. We then could raster those heads so the ink jet spray patterns were over lapping and even experts could hardly tell if the print was an original or not. Add to this the inks were archival quality with a life span against fading of 100 years or more. Then applied to archival canvas, paper or board, we could produce museum quality reproductions of original work. Then when we completed an edition, we would give the prints to the artist to pencil sign, number, date and title.
Then to your point, in some cases, artist did want to go back over the top of the prints and do hand drawn embellishments or hand done texturing. That is why when we did what we contracted for as an “edition” of prints, we required in our contract that the artists had to come to our plant and do the signing in our artists lounge. We had a “day room” set up for them with tables, rolling carts, pencils, electric sharpener, slip sheeting, snacks, coffee and drinks and supplied an assistant to help the artist. Without this control we could not provide Certification of the edition.
But today’s variation of the ink jet Giclee is the “print on Demand” concept. This allows the artist, once his piece has been scanned and stored in the main computer, to request and have printed, art prints “one at a time as needed” and thus a single repro can be produced “on demand” and shipped to them. By allowing this we had no control over the integrity of the edition, could not stop the artist from creating over runs. And the point you make, from re-working the surface with additional media, markings.
That is not necessarily a bad thing. It just makes the print into what is called a “monotype”. Many artists, including myself do this. I will create an original series of serigraphs [say 20 prints], then go back and re-work them one at a time and end up with 20 individuals, similar yet different pieces all of which can technically be called “originals” because each one is worked over differently.
It is this new approach that allows artist to sell “originals” on both Ebay and Etsy, by scanning their original and storing with a printer. Then post the original on Ebay and Etsy, title it as a “Custom” original acrylic or oil abstract, modern painting and list it with a 2-week handling time. Now when the Sale occurs, the artist orders just one repro on canvass. It ships to him in couple of days, he then stretches it on stretcher bars, puts it on his easel or work table, then he re-works over the surface changing some areas, covering others, adding transparent tinting over large areas is very popular. This now makes this one piece unique and different from the original, then lastly with clear brush texturing going over the whole surface with a clear varnish in turn hiding the process you talk about, being able to see re-worked areas by holding the work at an angle. Also, if an overall texture is added by using a smaller brush, it will make it look like it was made all at one time as a single original painting.
This also will fill in or level out any high and low spots, making the surface more uniform in height. Museums can detect this process by using black lights on the artwork in a dark room and by micron measurements of the artworks thickness overall. But this would never be done on the many what is being called, original acrylic artwork, in the wild, being sold on Ebay and Etsy. Too costly.
America is full of “wall decor” repro prints. And if not, then China has an art district [look up China art factories] and watch the videos of Chinese artist knocking out “originals” repeatedly by hand.
But yes, one can see things on the surface or artwork, but to the average layman at an estate sale or auction, without being able to get the piece out of the frame, out from under the glass and giving close examination to both paint, ink or paper it is hard to tell.
I approach most art we buy out in the wild as it is all a cheap repro and has a value of the frame and glass only, until I take a very close look at it. Then at our local auction house I do occasionally find a piece worth paying a little bit more. At estate sales, buyer beware of paying high dollar for “wall decor”.
Tip for those shopping at local thrift stores, flea markets, and supposedly antique malls. A tip to be able to tell a cheap litho reproduction from 25 feet away. If you ever see a framed piece of art that has an overall blue, [cyan], purplish look to it. Keep walking. It is a 4-color process litho print done in CMYK inks and the red is the most unstable color and next is the yellow. The reason the framed print looks over all purple-bluish is that the red and yellow has faded due to sunlight hitting the surface. Those cheap litho inks, like the ink and presses used for magazine publishing will be gone in 12 to 24 months, especially if subjected to sun light. I see these all the time and they stick out from yards away from me.
Oh, and any print that has two signatures is usually a repro. The original signature on the original painting is copied when it is scanned to reproduce, then after a cramp load are printed, the publisher gets the artist to pencil sign it. That falls into the category, for me at least, of buying a poster at a concert, then getting one of the musicians to autograph it for you. Well it may become valuable, then maybe not. Does anyone have a signed poster by Milli Vanilli [ugh], and if so, who cares!
So, yes, there is just a myriad of things to know and watch out for when buying any type of art. And I really don’t call what I see art by a technical creation term, but I use repros, wall decor, house pictures and therein lies the value… as a pretty picture, if you like the subject matter, you want it in your home, then buy that pretty picture and hang it. But to think that most pictures will be valuable art, is not the case, in most circumstances, but it does happen.
Stick to original old oil paintings, look at the back for brown old canvass edges, look for nails not staples, no tape and surface condition. A 20 x 24 or larger original oil of a pleasant scene can go for several hundred dollars. And of course, if it is a known artist then more because of the reputation, name and original signature [autograph] on the work.
Aaahh, I just love the first hour of the morning with my two cups of coffee. Gets my mind flowing…
Make it a great day all…. 🙂
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
I believe they are called tea bag or tea ball caddies. If a metal tea ball is used with tea placed inside the ball, it is placed in a cup of hot water. When the tea is finished steeping, you lift the ball up with the metal chain that it has and place it on one of the caddies you have. It can sit there until taken away or if you want a second cup, you get another cup of hot water and then lift the tea ball from the caddy and replace in the water.
Research also says if a “bag” is used, you can place the bag on the caddy, but also place the rounded back side of a spoon over the tea bag, pick the whole thing up and press down on your spoon so that you “squeeze” the tea bag and let it drip back into your cup to get that last few drops of stronger tea out of the bag.
Oh and on Worthpoint there are some described as Tea or Coffee spoon holders
Oh course Jay or Ryanne are probably going to hit you with Gee Gaws, or tea thingy,Goo gaws, and the like. 🙂
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
My wife chimed in a little while ago, and said but what if that is an original opaque tempera painting framed up. So look closely and if no dots, then maybe take it to a local art gallery [not a hobby Lobby frame shop] and see what they say.
Or you can send a photo of it to Sotheby’s in NY. They have a website where you can submit photos, then they will ask a few questions, be ready for the, “Do you see dots” question. And from there they will provide more info or maybe want to see it directly.
Good luck and who knows, like Jay said, maybe you have a found treasure worth thousands. Good Luck!
mike at MDCGFA
Ok WBird: I am going to skip the ‘wall of text” on telling the difference between an “offset press lithograhic reproduction” and a real art print whether it be a real hand drawn stone lithograph, etching aquatint, serigraph [silk screen], lino cut, wood block. All of these having identifiable characteristics to them. But please search this site for lengthy discussions on offset repro’s.
But the first thing to do is to use a loupe, hand held magnifyer, anything that will give you a magnified view. Usually 6x power and up, preferably 10x power. Search linen testers on Ebay, Amazon and buy one. Many plastic ones only cost a 4 to 6 bucks. Now look at the print and if you see small round dots it is an offset reproduction. I bet dollars to donuts that is what it is.
The name on the back, the fact it is stamped and not pencil signed on the front in the margins I also bet that is nothing more than an inventory control number and the artist name just for the store personnel. A stamping like this adds no value. If a reproduction then not much value either.
If I had it I would first throw my loupe on it and if a “repro”, I would take it apart and either use the frame myself or sell just the frame. A repro that size with nothing on the margins or written in pencil, a real signature, date or title has no more value than framing up an over size post card, which BTW, many framers will do all the time, or they take pictures of famous artist and cut the pages out of large art books, mat and frame them and sell them as home decor. Remember they are framers! But if that is masking tape of that print on the back, then not much of a decent framer either.
Without close examination of the matting, if straight or bevel cut, French matting, double matted, linen surface, and the quality of the mitered corners, are nail holes filled with framers putty, proper wiring on the back, non-glare glass I can’t tell you if the frame is of a high quality thus price. But some moulding contours [and yours seems to be tri-level like triple crown moulding in a house] can run at a high price per linear inch and linear foot. My father in law was a professional framers and he had moulding 8, 10, 12 feet long [called lineals] that he paid $6 to $15 per foot for, especially if they hand done gold leaf on them.
So dig out that magnifying glass and take a look.
For fun, as you look at those dots [which I still bet dollars to dounuts] you will find, think about this. You will only see the dots printed in Blue, red, yellow and black [CMYK] and if so, then ask yourself how are you seeing greens, tans, browns, purples, when there is no ink used on the print that are those colors. LOL :-). That too has been discussed at length in one of my previous posts.
I could be completely wrong.. but remember I have a lot of donuts [plus about 50 years as an artist, master print maker and commercial printer] riding on my guess you will just find a bunch of dots.
Now if there is a real pencil signed Wyeth either Andrew or some of his family members, then Bingo! Also Andrew did his works in watercolor and egg tempera. There are no dots in any of those mediums again LOL 🙂 and the only way to get prints is to litho repro them.
Think of this as far as value goes. A hand done limited edition takes weeks or months to do a small amount of prints. Usually 250 to 500 signified by the numbering system of 1/250 to 250/250. Huge editions are very frowned upon in the real art community. Not even 1,000 print editions are of much interest unless the pencil signture is there, and then you are buying, collecting or selling and autograph.
A big thing to think about. American offset press run at speeds of 750 to 1,000 impressions per hour. If you print a run of repros to make any money, to offset the cost of set up, proofing, ink mixing, break down and clean up that is going to take a days worth of work. That time frame will produce an edition of over 5,000 to 7,500 prints. With every print over 500 the value starts to dimenish on top of the fact it is a repro. Modern repros don’t have much more value than a printed poster. $5 to $15 tops and then a old 60’s poster will be more value than a repro by a known artist.
All of this is based on a thought the artist is involved. Have you ever seen a reproduction of the Mona Lisa. I have. Plenty of them. All a publisher needs is poermission from the owner of the original, usually a museum of high end art, and then take a good photograph of the original in the museum ot in a studio [under security of course] and Bingo agagin. Another 10,000 prints of the Mona Lisa is created.
Most framed art we find at auctions and estate sales are not woth too much. I bought about 10 framed works about two weeks ago. The seller asked where I was going to hang all of them and I answered honestly, I am not, I just want the frames and glass, I am going to throw the repors away. Junky European harbor and village scenes.
So there you go, a lot to think about, some home work to do and of course search and check out the terms, art repos, half tone dots, fake art, color theory and a few other terms here on SL and take a read. I think the SL members have accumulated a fair amount of information about repors’ limited edition prints, wall art and the such.
And always remember a phrase I took from the Danbury Mint [and others] and added the Mike touch.. Limited edition plates, coins, medallions..yeah, sure, limited to everybody that wants one. as long as orders are coming in they are printing, pressing, pouring, casting and moulding. But funny thing, when the sales drop out, then the manufacturing of slock art stops and they come up with another limited edition, limited time only, scam to run on the American public.
Hey another Wall of text, mixed with a Dennis Miller rant at the end. I love it when I have a few minutes to spare. Keeps my juices flowing. 🙂 🙂
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Thanks Troy. But for 3 days in a row now, I have had to hit the road around 5 AM drive 30 miles up the road and be at the job site. With permits in place, it is time for the rubber to hit the road. Spent 5 hours today just being their for a front loader to clear the more wooded lot. It was freezing cold, sleet coming down and my phone kept going off with Ebay questions, offers and cha-ching offers. The bulldozer guy was on break when a cha ching came in and he asked what is that? Funny.
I turned 70 years old last month, I would just rather have been back in my office, coffee in hand and dealing with the Ebay stuff than what I was doing.
When I get through with these 4, I may not do any more, but by the end of April, atleast I would have made some good ROI.
Jay you were prying loose tile, I was digging holes with post hole diggers yesterday and today shoveling out dirt away from the storm drains and placing new, fresh sand bags to catch the silt run-off before it got into the drains.
When I dashed out this morning I had 2 small hand carved wooden figurines which sold for $90. I had to leave them unpacked. Luckily they dont have to ship until Monday. But I really like to ship same day when I can.
My helper ran out of stuff to do yesterday because the house pulled me away so much this week I didnt get done what I needed to do in the Ebay process.
Mike at MDCGFA
