--- Go to the Opening Page of the [Baren] web site ---

One of Americas great craftsman, Gustave Baumann's color woodblock prints are masterpieces of meticulous craftsmanship and artistic vision. Occasionally interrupted by those pesty puppets, the narrative for this documentary is composed of excerpts from Baumanns own unpublished autobiography. This film presents an unparalleled insight into Baumanns artistic mind and creative process and presents superb photographic tour of his beautiful woodblock prints. He used hand ground pigments, exact carving and fine papers to create flawless prints. Each print is a simple and elegant study of the customs, people and landscape of New Mexico.

Here also is a short time lapse view of the Historic Santa Fe Foundation's restoration of the exterior of Gustave Baumann's house in Santa Fe, NM. The exterior has been returned to its original tint, which complements the hand-painted wood on the home's windows and entrance.

Continued from [If you were my manager : Part One]

Thanks to those who contributed suggestions to yesterday's post about the currency question ... As I mentioned in the Discussion section on that page, I have added a little popup currency converter:

I've done it a slightly different way on my main 'Order Form' page. Over there, each price in the list is independently linked to the converted amount.

These are now working very nicely! I should have done this a long time ago!

But ...

This doesn't solve another of the problems with multiple currencies - the fact that rates change over time, and the cost of a subscription to any of my print series thus has a 'floating' price.

For example, if you live in the US, and had signed up to collect the Hanga Treasure Chest about 6 months ago, the price of 2,000 yen per print was about $20.50 ... But the print I send this month - at the same price of 2,000 yen - would cost you $22.20

How much will you have to pay next month? More, or less? Who knows ...

And I think this uncertainty is perhaps hurting my subscription orders.

So the question is whether or not to set the price in the customer's own currency. For a US-based collector, the price for those prints could be set at (say) $21.00 each, and they would be guaranteed that it wouldn't change during the course of their subscription to any particular set of prints.

As the currency started to vary over time, they would continue to pay the same amount, but I would receive either less, or more, as circumstances dictated. Would they feel cheated, or would they feel 'protected'? It would all depend on what happened as time went by ...

And of course I myself would have much more 'exposure' to currency fluctuations, something I have been protected against so far by having a 'prices in yen' policy.

If you were a potential collector looking at my price information, would this make much difference to you? Do you think my 'prices in yen' policy has been hurting?