Flutterby™! :

So the Sonoma County Woodworker's Association meeting last night was a presentation by Ian Agrell.

A couple of interesting observations: One is that for demonstration work he carves progressive pieces, from rough-out to finished, with only a few inches of a two or three foot piece actually finished. The reasons actually skip the obvious one, it's less work, and are about making sure that the client doesn't get enough sample to simply cast and reproduce, and showing the progression of the work and why the hand-carved look is different from what you might get from router carved.

He also mentioned that he's got a high end business, presences in four countries, and although he does much of the design and prototyping work himself he's got a staff in India that does the production carving. His business, jobs of a hundred thousand to a few million bucks a whack, has increased dramatically in the past few years as the super rich have become ultra rich, but many of his associates in the U.S. who had been working on jobs like a five thousand dollar mantelpiece, who used to have thriving businesses, have been scrounging for work recently.

So the practical effect of the loss of the middle class is that we're losing domestic craftspeople.