Tag Archives: etsy

Protesty

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Yesterday, thousands of Etsy shops protested the inclusion of resellers on Etsy by putting their shop on “vacation” or “holiday” mode for a day. The record of silent protesters can be found here: http://protesty.com/

Thanks for the heads up about this from fellow blogger and maker, Nicola Baker. She has written an insightful post about the value of handmade and what it means to be a maker in a world where art and skill has been devalued by cheap labor and the global monoculture. She says, “Handmade art should have value and should be valued, especially at a time when our high streets are, in the main, full of generic shops. Wouldn’t our lives be dull if we all had the same jobs and if our homes were full of the same decorative pieces?”  I completely agree.

My experience at Whitby proved to me that I am competing in many markets, in the literal and meta sense, where a race to the bottom determines what sells.  Walmart, Primark and Asda and the like have distorted what we mean by value. The handmade movement presents a powerful antidote to slave labour and monoculture by providing consumers with a connection to the objects in their lives, their makers and the process of production.  People who embrace handmade are buying fewer things but are opting for objects they will live with and love, eschewing the throwaway bargain culture that dominates the high street.

While the presence of resellers has become a growing problem on Etsy, it was the Etsy Front Page feature of a reseller that instigated this mass protest.  I don’t wish to link to her shop, as I feel the amount of publicity this has given to her shop galls me even further. Etsy has shut down myriad shops for transgressions that were minor compared to this seller, who is claiming she runs a “collective” even though she outsources her work and doesn’t make the pieces herself.  My guess is the reason Etsy hasn’t shut her down and has left up the feature is that she is a business woman formost, as she claims in the interview, and she probably has a pretty good lawyer. (Edit– apparently she does have a lawyer who has sent a C&D order  to someone who has posted on the Etsy site asking for an explanation of the situation. It just gets worse! To read more on this hilarious yet disturbing development, go to regretsy.)

I would have joined the protest, but I learned of it too late to make it meaningful.  It would be great if the Protesty site would actually have an online petition or mailing list about how more sellers could get involved on an ongoing basis, so that the protest lives beyond May 10th. (Edit: There is a petition around this issue, though I am not sure it’s related to Protesty)  Also, it would be great if the site could have a list of demands that were put to Etsy about defining its new shop criteria which is causing so much trouble, and explaining the inconsistent enforcement of their rules. The response from the Etsy CEO has been utterly useless to the concerned sellers whose livelihood is at stake.  He equates their outcry with a “mob mentality”.

I don’t think Etsy will ever understand how impossible it is for a small maker to compete with a reseller on Etsy. I don’t think they care as long as the reseller is paying for their listings and renewals.  What might have been a supportive website spearheading a handmade movement has cashed in our cred, jumped the shark.  The handmade credentials of Etsy, created by all the hard working artisans out there with callouses to prove it, can now be used by anyone who can document a few workers and claim their factory is a “collective”.

I love Etsy’s generic support for sellers– their tutorials and emails are very helpful.  But when I’ve needed something as an individual, having problems with the site or with non-delivery of an item, Etsy has shut down the conversation at the moment of difficulty. In a way, this parallels Etsy’s response to the reseller front page controversy.  Etsy has shut down the comments on the Featured Seller page, moving the discussion to a more private place on the site, so confused and concerned Etsy sellers are talking to each other behind closed doors. Given the recent development and increasing number of stories of Etsy shutting down legit shops overnight without explanation, I am setting up my own online shop to run in tandem with the Etsy one.

It is clear Etsy will not be the one to look out for independent makers.  We must do that ourselves but presenting our work the best we can, with all the emotional connections we have to it and trust that our customers will recognize what separates the authentic craftsperson from the opportunist.  Shoppers on Etsy must be even more vigilant, and makers must strive to forge connections with our customers so they know who we are and what we stand for.

What did you dream last night?

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The Ghost of Eastry Church, Kent.

Last night was Saint Mark’s Eve.  There is an old tradition in the North of England which required parishioners of certain churches to hold a vigil through the night, watching for apparitions of themselves. Those who saw themselves enter– as rotting corpses or marching coffins– were sure to die in the coming year. Fair warning; time to prepare.

Though I now live in a city that makes a good deal of its living off the undead, and the myriad ghosts of this little walled town outnumber us, I am not jaded.  It is easy to see how death walks with us, here, despite the garish morbidity of all the ghost tours on offer, with their own inoculation to this mystery.  With that said, I have never seen on heard a ghost in York.  (What will usually send a shiver are recordings I find, actively look for trolling about on the internet– either supposedly photographic or EVP or Electronic Voice Phenomenon. Perhaps what is more disturbing is the medium, and the necessity of contact rather than the contact itself.  But that is a topic for another post.)

Perhaps the vigil of Saint Mark’s Eve is a version of an older custom on Walpurgisnacht, or the Eve of the Feast of the English Saint Walpurgis, who is a Christian manifestation of an older harvest Goddess. Walpurgisnacht was held on the night of the witch’s sabbath, May 30th, when the doors between worlds were open for spirits to pass between.  Probably the best time to hold such a vigil!

Older still at this time, were rituals involving cakes and dreams of love in the night. Bake a bannock in silence. Put it under your pillow. In the night you will see his face.  Come morning, eat the bannock; sweep the crumbs from the bed.

The Hare and the Moon

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Egyptian Heiroglyph for hare also means "to be".

I have been to Whitby many times for the Gothic Weekend twice a year– this year will be the first year I will be attending as a dealer!  Look for me in the Leisure Centre if you will be there.

Near the Shambles in Whitby, there used to be a shop with green shutters painted with three hares. That little Pagan shop has moved and the three hares are now painted over, but it was the first place I saw this sacred image. The hares form a triquetra, or three cornered shape, representing the three aspects of the Goddess– later adopted by the Christian faith to represent the Holy Trinity.

They are a riddle, these “rotating rabbits”– three hairs, each with two ears, yet they only share three. This image originated in the cave temples of China, and traveled along the Silk Road to England. Sometimes called “Tinner’s Rabbits”, the symbol was adopted by tin miners in Devon.

But the three rabbits also decorate mosques, and the appearance of this traveling symbol in synagogues may be a reference to the Jewish diaspora.

Hares have been associated with the Virgin Mary– and most likely is attached in ancestral memory to an older Goddess, one associated with the moon and lunar cycles.  In Chinese Folklore the Moon Rabbit is said to be pounding out the elixir of immortality in a mortar for the moon Goddess Chang’e. The Aztecs also have a moon rabbit legend as well as many other cultures. Some say you can see this rabbit by looking at the shadows on the moon which form its shape.  One wonders if the moon gazing hare is looking up to see its big goddess in the sky– it’s a nice image to contemplate at this time of year.  At least, I like to think on it.

In the days before special effects, the optical illusion of the three ears must have had been amplified with a kind of shifting mystery. These rabbits turn and turn in the mind, spinning the wheel of the year toward spring.

As an aside, I have been listening to the neo folk band, The Hare and the Moon a lot lately– they describe themselves as “spook folk”.  You might like to give them a listen! http://www.myspace.com/thehareandthemoon

Blessed Spring Equinox, dear reader!

The Hare and the Moon, Labradorite and Pewter Earrings by Feral Strumpet on Etsy.

Blessed Terminalia, Dear Reader

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The drystone walls of the Yorkshire Dales

When I think of Yorkshire, the first image in my mind is of wide open space marked by the patchwork of drystone walls.  And there are invisible boundaries, tracks: public foot paths often are the very same Death Roads, or ancient rights-of-way through private land, which allowed people their funerary rites. And there are fragments of Roman roads, as well as dream-paths or ley lines.

This island is a sacred palimpsest, scored and re-scored, and yet all the marks remain as either archeological evidence or fairy paths.

Today is the Roman Festival of Terminus, the god of borders and endings. Ovid, in his usual warm, vivid and simple verse, describes the ritual:

Terminus, whether a stone or a stump buried in the earth,

You have been a god since ancient times.

You are crowned from either side by two landowners,

Who bring two garlands and two cakes in offering.

An altar’s made: here the farmer’s wife herself

Brings coals from the warm hearth on a broken pot.

The old man cuts wood and piles the logs with skill,

And works at setting branches in the solid earth.

Then he nurses the first flames with dry bark,

While a boy stands by and holds the wide basket.

When he’s thrown grain three times into the fire

The little daughter offers the sliced honeycombs.

Others carry wine: part of each is offered to the flames:

The crowd, dressed in white, watch silently.

Terminus, at the boundary, is sprinkled with lamb’s blood,

And doesn’t grumble when a sucking pig is granted him.

I love the affectionate irony in the last line, which speaks to an intimacy Ovid (and it might be said Romans in general) had with the gods.  What a hard blessing are boundaries and wise endings, and how necessary.

Glowing coals from a broken pot. Ember Berry Earrings by Feral Strumpet on Etsy

The White Rose of York

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The minster illuminated with white roses. Photo by Kippa Matthews

Every place has its symbol that defines it, captures its genius loci.

In London I worked in the City for a spell– one of the darker times in my life. I would often look to the guardian of that place– the pizzled dragon with its heraldic erection, and wonder.   To survive the alienation and everyday struggle I would often call on dark things to help me.  They were always there, waiting.

The York Rose

What a contrast now to find the sigil of this city, York, to be a white, five petaled mandala.  I fell in love with it when I first saw it.  Though the history dates back to the House of York in the 14th century and the War of the Roses in the 15th century, it was really the Victorians who popularized the symbol.  Great urban planners they were (though they tried to take down the city walls!) But they were also sentimentalists, and the white rose as a municipal symbol seems uniquely Victorian.

Of course the rose is the Christian symbol representing Mary– and where Mary is, we are sure to find also a much older goddess that predates Christianity. The rose is a pagan symbol– with its five petals like the five arms of the pentagram. Their cyclical, spiraled structure suggests the unfurled labyrinth of faith.

White Rose of York earrings by Feral Strumpet on Etsy

Ode to Poe, The Third and Final Post.

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Nevermore illustration from AntiqueGraphique on Etsy

Happy Birthday, Edgar Allen Poe.

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by the blog and has helped promote my shop over the last few days of this Poe-party.  The winner of the Poe Grimoire bookmark has been chosen by the whims of fate (out of a hat), and she is the inimitable Jo Taylor– fantastic dancer and member of the wonderful 400 Roses Morris side.

Beautiful Jo is in the back row, far left!

Another manifestation of the Nevermoore bookmark is, of course, still available in my Etsy shop!

Poe Nevermore Grimoire Bookmark by Feral Strumpet on Etsy

The Sound of Home

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If there is a sound I associate with the city of York, it’s the bells of the minster.  They have little religious significance to me, and probably because of that they often seem a kind of aural ambush of the sublime, arriving suddenly and permeating the little streets with echoing peals that are quite haunting.  Just the other day the bells played a rendition of Greensleeves and then another melancholy carol– something that sounded much like Eliza’s Aria (which will now forever be known as the Lloyds TSB song).

I like to imagine the bells are summoned from the Minster itself, deep beneath the doomstone, and that they are the song of the many greenmen secreted in the mansory.  But really, it’s an athletic endeavor, the ringing of the bells. In the two towers there are 56 bells, the most bells of any English cathedral.  You can read about the bells and their ringers on the ringer’s site.  Listening to the bells reminds me of my favourite Tarkovsky film, Andrei Rublev, set in Medieval Russia, where the casting of a bell is an almost magical act.

After standing in the rain (ill advised– I caught cold) spellbound by the sound, I was inspired to make these earrings in tribute.

York Minster Rose Windows, Handmade Earrings by Feral Strumpet on Etsy

Garden Dreaming

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The Secret Metamorphosis Necklace

The Secret Metamorphosis has been featured in this garden-themed treasury on Etsy.  For the first time in over ten years I actually have a garden of my own.  It’s a little brick corner, but it’s mine.  Of course, I missed planting season and it is a bit bare.  There are no butterflies flitting about the clothesline, but maybe next year.  I have read that they are disappearing, which, like the sad news about the bees, makes me despair. I will be researching and planning a garden with butterfly-friendly plants.

I do have a wormery, which is a weird mediation on death and the cycle of life every couple of weeks when I go to tend to it!  Right now I keep it in the old outhouse which will act as a shed.

Just think, I have all late summer and winter to dream about the perfect potted garden.

The Garden Goodies Treasury on Etsy

A Cephalopod Talisman

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The Octopus Netsuke Necklace

One of my best sellers is the Octopus Netsuke necklace, and after reading this compelling blog post by the fantastic Mark Chabourn, entitled “Bow to Your Tentacled Overlords” about the ability of octopi to learn and use tools even,  I began to realize why.  Despite their incredibly alien strangeness, they are perhaps more like us than anyone first understood.  Through the Eye of an Octopus is another brilliant discussion summary of cephalopod intelligence studies, puzzle solving and even potentially dreaming.

Many of my necklaces are maid with miniature pewter sculptures from Green Girl Studios– their life-like detail and expressive natures make them particularly suitable for talismanic adornments.  The octopus is a prime example– its detail reminiscent of Japanese netsuke.  Combined with Swarovski pearls and crystals, I’ve wanted to make this one a worthy tribute to the tentacled overlords!  (And I bow to the customer who just got married in hers!)

The Octopus Netsuke Necklace