ARTS, CRAFTS, AND COMMERCIAL SALES

New Mexico magazine’s August edition has an article by Gaye Brown de Alverez titled “Buyer Beware” that started me thinking. (Sorry, this issue is not posted yet on the website.) I want to blog for a bit about the knowledge component of crafts. If you doubt that there is one, try sometime to make a pot as good as those from New Mexico, or a Navajo rug, or a squash blossom necklace—it takes skill and understanding. And consider how much knowledge in needed of the culture to make an original piece that would be taken by other artisans to be Navajo or Hopi.

The article deals with native American jewelry and Navajo weaving, and the introduction of low cost craftwork, and Asian imports copying original native American designs.

A market has been developed over the decades for jewelry created by Navajo, Hopi and other native America tribal jewelry makers. Collectors have been known to pay very high prices for very fine one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry. There is a fairly large number of craft jewelry items sold. Now Thai and Philippine craftshops are replicating designs from books and magazines for export to the U.S.

The article points out that in the U.S. Southwest, one can go to craft shops and buy silver conchos, attach them to a leather belt, and have a crafted, silver, concho belt. Moreover, a native American can go to the same craft shop, but the same conchos, make the belt, and sell you a native-American, crafted, silver, concho belt. There is nothing wrong with either course. But such a belt should not be confused with a belt made from hand-crafted silver conchos, and well hand-crafted silver conchos are expensive.

Why are the collectors items expensive? Part of the value comes from the opportunity cost of the labor of the craft people. Since salaries are more expensive in the U.S. than in Asia, the cost of American hand crafts will be higher. Part of the value comes from the merchandizing, and the Santa Fe fine jewelry shops probably need to and can charge a lot for selling the collectable jewelry that they sell.

Part of the value resides in the designs of the individual pieces. The best native American jewelry makers do a wonderful job extrapolating from their cultural history and the designs of others to develop their own new designs. Indeed there are major competitions that identify the best new craft pieces each year. Their designs are informed by their craft skills, and their knowledge of what can be fabricated. Many of the designs in pottery were specifically drawn from archaeological studies, replicating designs of ancestors that had been lost for centuries.

In principle, jewelry designs can be protected by design patents in the U.S., and indeed such patents have been issued. They are relatively expensive as compared with the prices of crafted pieces of jewelry, and enforcing a jewelry design patent would probably be too expensive for someone who found that a unique piece had been copied.

The article points out that Asian manufacture jewelry is marked with the country of origin, and there is nothing illegal in making jewelry that is inspired by native American designs, or indeed in copying designs that are not patented. If Asian jewelry is sold fraudulently as having been made by native Americans, that would be in contravention of the U.S. Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (and possibly other laws.)

But the more practical question is what about just offering Asian jewelry crafted to simulate native American styles? It certainly seems likely that there are Thai and Philippine crafts people who have skills and artistic abilities comparable to those of native Americans. Consumers may wish to buy finely crafted products, with designs that they find pleasing, at prices less than would be found for native American pieces. And indeed, I don’t know that U.S. crafts people deserve protection from foreign competitors who work equally well but cheaper.

Still it feels wrong to sell Asian copies of native American jewelry! Certainly on the one hand, I would like to help keep native American cultures alive, including the tradition of hand crafted work that has developed over the past century. I certainly think that someone who creates a specific design deserves some kind of payment from those who copy it to sell the copies commercially, and the current intellectual property rights systems don’t seem to provide such protection.

While the problem is being felt now by native American crafts people, it is likely to be felt by others. I doubt that Egyptian crafts people received benefits from the sales of “Egyptian pattern jewelry” that has been so popular over the last century. As Thailand develops, will we find cheap rip-offs of Thai jewelry from other, poorer Asian countries?

I’ve got to say that it also seems strange to me that given the wonderful cultural history of Asian crafts, there would not be a better market for authentic examples from its own traditions than for copies of native American cultural objects.

This is a blog entry without answers, but pondering a question.