I have thoughts about the last part:
This is what mass consumerist art has done to the idea of selling that as a product when it's so clearly fine art. Like, with the effort she's putting in x20 for a decent wage and materials?? That's a $80,000 piece of art a member of the landed gentry would commission a year in advance for his wife on their 20th wedding anniversary. This is a priceless heirloom. How can you say "Oh yeah, I wanna buy it, you should sell them" as if you could ever turn something like this into a product??
This is fine art, period. That piece will be in a museum, or if not is should be in a museum in a hundred years.
I just said to my wife, "oh, look at this beautiful autistic person, this is autistic culture," when I sent her the link. And half a second later I said, "and I think she has the same headphones we do."
But truly, this is incredible fine art. Fuck. I love that little moth.
Holy shit YES this nails something I have been trying to put words to for ages.
One of my friends was a great lacemaker, he made a 6ft by 6ft buckspoint veil for his wife for their wedding, sprigged all over with meaningful flowers and fruits and stuff (Things like her favourite flower, but also representations of both his and her mother's wedding bouquets, the blossom trees from an orchard they went to on a memorable date, hydrangeas from her grandparents' garden, sweet peas which grew wild around their first house together... Something 180 sprigs in all, some of them just little things the size of a postage stamp but lots of them bigger than A4-size, just a truly nightmarish amount of work) - And people often asked "Can I buy one like it? How do I get one of those?" And her answer was always "Marry a lacemaker, and have a five year engagement while he makes it."
Because this is absolutely money-can't-buy it work... Unless you are someone's patron. Like, fully "I have contracted this artisan to work for me, I am paying all of their expenses for as long as it takes to make this, because it is both mentally and physically taxing work that will take them months or years of work, and I will keep paying them for months and years after it is done because they will have committed so much time to me and shaped their style so much in tandem with my needs that they now are exponentially more valuable to me than to anyone else" With an extra portion of "I may have just burnt all my money because if they die with it unfinished nobody else will complete this for me."
But that exact idea of, you CAN pay for this, but you aren't buying a product, you are commissioning a work which will both be the life's work of the creator (at least, for the period that they are making it) and that will potentially change the face of the craft forever beyond it. (SOMEONE commissioned the Lindisfarne Gospel, someone commissioned the Mona Lisa.) ...Feels important.
Commissioned work deserves its pay; mass-production by its nature cannot be commissioned and cannot achieve the same results. I.e. you pay what its worth. You can't demand Art and expect to pay cheap
