Visit to a "Fine Woodworking" gallery.....

[Doug Rasmussen]

Gallery is the Wood Merchant in La Conner, WA. La Conner is a small tourist town on the water 75 miles north of Seattle. The gallery has been there for quite awhile I'm aware of and is well stocked (website say they always maintain 100 turned salad bowls in stock). It doesn't appear local artists are the main suppliers of goods and for sure not a consignment shop since inventory was from around the country. With a few exceptions all items can be handled without supervision, (unlike most galleries dealing in relatively expensive goods).

Some observations.....

Turned lidded boxes..there was only one I saw with a fitted lid and it was small diameter with a small opening and a loose fitting lid. There were a couple hinged lidded boxes where fit is not an issue. My conclusion is the owners have decided fitted lids are too much of a problem.

Hollowed forms...maybe half a dozen. My only previous touching of one was a soccer ball sized form at an AAW symposium that was surprisingly light with its thin walls (so light a stiff breeze might blow it off the mantel). The gallery's were not light, it was as if they were either solid or weighted after turning. Maybe they were hollowed to prevent cracking then weighted for stability. All of them had glass test tubes inside to hold dry or wet flower arrangements. Seems like a good idea to have the glass insert to make the item useful rather than only a demonstration of the turner's ability to do thin walls.

Segmented vessels.. all from the same person in Ohio (maybe a business specializing in segmenting?). $750+ in pricing. These were items I really wanted to touch to verify if the glue joints became apparent to feel over time. They did. All were dated 2015, so in the year or so there was enough change in dimension to be noticed, but not enough to justify re-sanding and it didn't detract from appearance.

Salad bowls... as I said they claim over 100 in stock. Mostly by Dale Larson, makes you wonder if he does them all himself. Another gallery in Seattle has quite an inventory of his bowls also. How can one person do that many bowls and I'm only talking about two galleries in the Seattle area? The shop owner asked me if I was a woodturner when he saw me feeling the bowl contours for any waviness, there wasn't any, all perfect smooth contours.

Anyway, nice place to be able to actually handle and examine quality turnings.

[daryl moses]

Interesting!
Just curious......what was the average size, type of wood, and price of the salad bowls?

[Doug Rasmussen]

Interesting!
Just curious......what was the average size, type of wood, and price of the salad bowls?

A guess, 12" diameter by 5" high was typical. Variety of woods from plain to more exotic highly figured burl. Least expensive I noted was $140 up to about $300+. Not sure if the $140 was a Dale Larson.

I figure items like these turnings in a gallery are bought for $1 and sell for $2 (retailer sells for twice what he pays). Some of the turnings made me wonder how the turner could be making decent money unless he was well tooled for more of a production operation rather than one-two pieces of a style.

Years ago down the Oregon coast we'd sometimes stop for a tour at one of the Myrtle wood "factories" where they mass produced bowls (not sure of those still exist). You got a pretty good idea of how automated and efficient a bowl operation could be in terms of machinery. Never did understand the fascination of Myrtle wood though.

[Rich Riddle]

At the arts show in Anacortes a few weeks ago they had a fine art section of the show where bowls were hundreds of dollars. Just outside of there they had the local turners group turning little projects for free. Some of the local turners were producing better projects than the fine arts dealer was selling. Coincidentally, positioned directly between the two groups was the portable toilet section.

[daryl moses]

Thanks for the reply.
I checked his [Dale Larson] web site out, he dos some nice work for sure. He "cores" some of his bowls so he doesn't have as much waste as I would have and utilizes more of the blank.
Wish I could get as much for my bowls as he does, but like you said the seller is marking the price up so as to make a profit and besides all of my wood is free.:)

[Brice Rogers]

I did a Google search on "dale larson, gresham oregon" and found an interesting and nicely done non-commercial video. https://vimeo.com/168707936

I liked his comment in the video "Wood Turning provides a pathway through life...we [woodturners] are a community".

[Wes Ramsey]

I would hazard a guess that those 'heavy hollow forms' probably weren't fully hollowed and may have just been weed pots, which are basically just contoured chunks of wood with a hole drilled in the middle to hold a glass cylinder for water and flowers. I've taken to turning several of these lately as they are quick to turn out, not terribly expensive and are more useful than 'just art'.

[Reed Gray]

The Myrtle (California Bay Laurel) shops still exist, but the turners are fading away. Myrtle will glow when you sand to very high grits. Color can vary a lot. Best ones have black streaks running through it.

I was at a show earlier this year, and one person told me I was lowering market value because of my prices. He turned very 'artsy' pieces mostly and had a few utility bowls on the side. I can admit that when I first started that I thought the same about some other turners. Now, to me it is more of a 'raising the skill level' than lowering the market.

Dale can charge more for his stuff because of reputation. Every one in the NW turns myrtle. Few of us are crazy enough to turn madrone, which to me is my favorite wood to turn. The more it warps, the better it sells for me. Dale boils all of his so they are nice and round.

robo hippy

[Ralph Lindberg]

..
Salad bowls... as I said they claim over 100 in stock. Mostly by Dale Larson, makes you wonder if he does them all himself. Another gallery in Seattle has quite an inventory of his bowls also. How can one person do that many bowls and I'm only talking about two galleries in the Seattle area? The shop owner asked me if I was a woodturner when he saw me feeling the bowl contours for any waviness, there wasn't any, all perfect smooth contours.

Anyway, nice place to be able to actually handle and examine quality turnings.

I'm going to guess the name didn't ring a bell... former BOD of the AAW, former President of the AAW, well known demonstrator both regionally and nationally.

Yes he did all those (and lots more) himself.

[Ralph Lindberg]

...

Years ago down the Oregon coast we'd sometimes stop for a tour at one of the Myrtle wood "factories" where they mass produced bowls (not sure of those still exist). You got a pretty good idea of how automated and efficient a bowl operation could be in terms of machinery. Never did understand the fascination of Myrtle wood though.

As Robo noted, the industry is significantly smaller then it used to be.

I'm also going to guess you never went into "back room" of any of those shops.
Every last one, as soon as they learned we were also turners almost dragged us into the production areas. Mostly they turn with large scrappers (see Robo's Big-Ugly). One I know well cores with a Oneway & then scraps.

We always come back with cores & various Myrtle blanks, last time one of the shops sold us some Myrtle burl, oh is that nice.

[Ralph Lindberg]

..
Dale can charge more for his stuff because of reputation. Every one in the NW turns myrtle. Few of us are crazy enough to turn madrone, which to me is my favorite wood to turn. The more it warps, the better it sells for me. Dale boils all of his so they are nice and round.

robo hippy

Dale charges more then some & gets it.

Actually I have to disagree about the Madrone, most turners I know love it & yes most of us boil it.

I know Dale keeps his stock in "stock watering tanks" until he is ready to turn in. A couple years ago I was talking to the guy that supplies most of us with burl and he told me that Dale had just bought an entire load (30 ft flatbed trailer) from him.

One of the guys in Olympia (I really hoped you were coming up this year for the symposium) turns his Madrone bowls and then beads them with Dave's tools, then lets them dry and warp. They look like they are "rope" vessels and all lumpy, really neat.

[Jerry Wright]

I talked to Dale a number of years ago. At that time he was turning 75-80 bowls per week. I would guess that if he signed it, he turned it. He really gets into it!!!

[John Spitters]

I've been selling my turnings, bowls, hollowforms etc. through the Wood Merchant for the past 5 years, they sell my bowls faster than I can supply them, mind you I only turn as a hobby and not a business. As to the hollowforms, I just recently moved several of mine to another gallery since they are not big sellers at The Wood Merchant, though one did sell last month. The heavy hollow forms you are referring to are large weed pots and not hollowforms per say. ( theses are not mine ) I also produce live edge hall / entry tables / sofa tables that I sell through The Wood Merchant. And yes this is all done on a consignment basis.
All of the bowls sold there are mostly from local turners some of which are very well known in the turning community. ( I am an exception as I am from Canada )
I would guess that he has more than a dozen turners supplying bowls.