By way of Boingboing, Mary Robinette Kowal talks about the reason that professional puppets are so expensive. Not to spoil the punch-line for you, but it ain’t the materials you’re paying for, it’s the time, effort, and expertise of the puppet-builder.

While I agree with Mary’s concern about the perception of the cost of building a puppet — her suggesting that most people’s estimate of what a puppet would cost is likely based on puppets they might’ve made in kindergarten — I disagree with her that there were no material costs in this case. She mentions using clay, using the materials for paper mache, using the blue foam — and while these are doubtless low-price items (one of our best sources of puppet-making supplies is our local dollar store) they DO carry a cost, and the implication that she isn’t charging additionally for the gear is troubling.

This last bit is something that we struggle with, because if you just consider the time involved in making the puppet, and agree on a puppet for X cost without taking the foam/fur/whatever into account, the money you make starts to go WAY down, very quickly. And while it certainly isn’t all about the money, if you don’t remember to factor those tangible costs, you’ll run into situations (as we sometimes do, despite best effort) where you’re building puppets more or less pro-bono.

Volunteer work is good, but you shouldn’t be doing it by accident.

I will say also that I was pleasantly surprised to see a puppetry reference on Boingboing that wasn’t about the art collective monochrom (my reasons for being pleasantly surprised will be the subject of another entry, I imagine).