The Pack-Up

We packed everything up yesterday afternoon in a record 3 1/2 hours, just about lost it while shrink-wrapping the three pallets, but instead descended into post-show giddiness. If you've ever shrink-wrapped anything, you'll know that it's the same as Saran-wrapping food in your kitchen — the roll gets tangled, sticks to anything and everything — except that in shrink-wrapping the roll is 2+ feet long and misbehaves often. There's an art to shrink-wrapping a pallet, and it seems that we have to reinvent it every time we do it.

It's intense work, and all around us is a general frenzy as every vendor is hot to get packed and outa there. At one point, to give my complaining back a momentary rest, I laid myself down on the rubber flooring and closed my eyes. I could have easily fallen asleep.

When we left, what was, just hours prior, a beautifully-lit and carpeted marketplace, what now an upheaval of empty boxes,  disassembled display units, dollies, rolling carts, packing peanuts, tossed water bottles, newspapers, show maps, and the general detritus of after-market.

Rather incredible to think that in a few days our pallets will travel by truck to a Philadelphia warehouse, where they'll sit for a few weeks before being delivered to the Buyer's Market of American Craft.

And then back to Seattle.

As wholesale shows go, Atlanta was considerably less than fantastic, but we garnered some new accounts and made some great connections which have lots of potential. To be honest, the buyers were generally of a less-sophisticated sensibility than those in the Northeast. We won't be going back.

But....we will have a collection for sale at the gift shop of the Renwick Gallery, a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.