This show is sponsored by the Society of Arts and Crafts (SAC) in Boston, MA. SAC is the oldest non-profit crafts organization in the U.S. SAC also sponsors CraftBoston Holiday show to fill the gap left when Crafts in the Castle ended a couple of years ago. This is a craft only show located in the Seaport World Trade Center on Boston Harbor, there were about 200 exhibitors. The quality of the show is very good and has some non-traditional exhibitors. There are non-profit booths which cannot sell anything but are for inforamation/education purposes only. These booths are heavily discounted. Some of these booths are Fuller Craft Museum, North Bennett Street School, Metalwerx studio. There is usually an international component to this show. This year there were about ten Israel Artists. Their work tended to have a more commercial look as these artists are very tuned to current fashion and interior design trends. They brought a new demographic to the show who were there specifically to visit the Israel artists but then shopped the rest of the show. As usual there were some exhibitors who felt they did not sell as well as they anticipated but most were happy. Feedback from exhibitors was very good, a few said that it was their best show ever. Sales seemed to be up significantly over the last two years, attendance was also up from the past two years. There were more exhibitors from the West Coast than in the past few years which I take to be a good sign.
http://craftboston.org/springindex.asp
martha
Comments
Although I have stopped exhibiting at shows I still have an "in" so-to-speak at the SAC so that staff willing share information with me. They were all very pleased with the show this year, from the look of the show, the quality of the exhibitors, the attendance and the exhibitor feedback on sales. All indicators seem to be leaning towards an upswing in the economy and recovery from the recession. I also forgot to mention that this is another show that started a host-an-artist program three years ago as a way to help off set some of the travel costs.
martha
I can just see the difference between the Israelis and the US artists -- they probably made us look like hippies :), but what an interesting mix. Cool move for CraftsBoston.