Read our blog
What we are building, and what we are learning
Notes from the people making Metzee, and from the sellers on it.
Follow along without visiting: subscribe by RSS · guides by category
34 posts tagged makers
A guide to India’s regional crafts
Where the main craft traditions come from, what to ask a seller about one, and why the place is part of the object.
Buying directly from the person who made it
How to tell, what to ask, and what is reasonable to expect from one person rather than a shop.
Selling as a collective or a self-help group
One store, several people, one bank account. How the roles map onto a group, and who has to hold the money.
Designing for the phone most people actually have
A mid-range Android on patchy data, not a laptop on fibre. That assumption decided more of this product than any feature did.
Why twelve languages is a constraint, not a feature
What it forces on every screen — and the quiet filter an English-only marketplace applies to who gets to sell.
Why packing is most of the experience
Everything between winning and opening belongs to the seller, and it is the part buyers remember.
Why handmade costs more, and what you are paying for
The arithmetic of hours, materials and the ones that failed. Written so the factory price stops being the comparison.
The case for buying from one person
What is actually lost when everything comes from a warehouse. Without pretending the warehouse has no advantages.
How Metzee works in twelve languages
Eleven Indian languages and English, including the parts that are genuinely hard and the one that is still not right.
Metzee compared with a weekend market stall
Reach, weather, and the conversation you lose. For makers who already stand behind a table.
Starting a handicraft collection
Buy from makers you can ask. The conversation is most of what you are learning.
Starting an art collection
Buy what you want to look at. Attribution is the expensive way to learn you were wrong.
Delivering handmade work: courier, local or collection
Fired, carved and lacquered work chips at the edges. Double-boxing is the answer, and it has a cost.
Delivering artwork: courier, local or collection
Unframed travels. Framed is a decision, and usually the wrong one.
Photographing handmade work
Show the hand. Tool marks and slight asymmetry are the argument, not the flaw.
Photographing artwork
Square on, daylight, no glare — and one raking shot so the surface exists.
Storing and caring for handmade work
Each material fails its own way, and the finish usually goes before the object does.
Common mistakes selling handmade work
Apologising for the variation, and pricing against a factory.
Common mistakes selling art
Letting an attribution ride along inside a condition claim, and framing before the sale.
What is your handmade work worth?
Your hours are the floor. Everything above it is the technique, the region and the maker being named.
What is your artwork worth?
Original or print decides the band. After that it is the artist, the medium and the condition.
Pricing art for a live auction
An original, a limited print and an open print are three markets. Then it is size, medium and name.
How to sell art on Metzee
Original or print, and if a print, which kind. That one distinction carries the whole category.
Pricing handicrafts for a live auction
Your hours are the floor. Do not let a race to the bottom set a price you cannot work at.
There is a show on right now.
Nothing to install — it runs in this browser.