About Market Standards

The Standards Committee

Teresa Pitzer and Lynn Brown are the current co-chairs of the Market's Standards Committee. This all volunteer committee is responsibe for assuring compliance with Market's core value that the Maker is the Seller. We are not a craft jury. Instead, we only assure that your craft meets the three basic standards as defined in the Member Information Handbook, and any craft specific guidelines, as specified in the Market Standards & Craft Specific Guidelines document.

The Committee meets the third Wednesday of each month after product screening. The next Standards Committee Meeting is Wednesday, April 17 at 4:30 PM at the Market office. We do new product screenings twice monthly on the first and third Wednesdays, March 6 - Nov. 6. The final screening date this year is November 6.

There is a New Member Orientation at 3:30 PM, right before the Product Screening. You must attend an orientation session before having your products screened. The New Product Screening Form needs to be presented with your items, you can download it and fill it out in advance if you prefer, or fill it out in the office.

Market's Board of Directors reviews all proposals and decisions of the Committee for final approval.

In addition to product screening, this Committee is charged with formulating the guidelines that define handcrafted. During the past year it became clear that there were at least two guidelines that need rewriting in order to more precisely convey the Market’s intent.

Our clothing guidelines use what might seem to be clear words, like “common generic designs” and “art work applied must be the member's original design”, yet when we try to implement these guidelines we find that their meaning is far from clear or fail to allow reasonable uses of artistic accents. This will be a long term project and can't be answered to in a few meetings.

The other broad area to receive scrutiny will be a review of the core tenant that the “maker is the seller”. This will include consideration of members using other family members to produce their crafts as well as non-family members that work under the “direct supervision” of the member.

Word crafting is an art and a skill that takes practice, knowledge and careful attention to the nuance of language. Once again your Standards Committee will try our hand at the art.

In addition to these larger concepts, we will continue to deal with other issues as they present themselves in the ongoing functions of this committee. Member input is always welcome by the Standards Committee, either on the above issues or any other concern any member may have. We serve on a voluntary basis, and are always open to interested Market members.

Committee membership is open to any active Market member. Voting rights are granted at the third consecutive meeting attended. All committee meetings are open to anyone and you are very welcome to attend.