Help/FAQ

What is your Return Policy?

We welcome exchanges of items up to 14 days after purchase and only after a thorough inspection to make sure the piece is in immaculate condition.

If you have any questions about your recent purchase, please contact us at info@dayinthelifegallery.com

What do we mean by "fine craft"?

The answer to that is long, and is partially answered in everything from the objects you can see in our gallery to the entries in our Journal of Fine Craft. But we'll attempt to provide a more concrete answer here. First, we fully acknowledge the subjective nature of this endeavor; we have no interest in trying to define fine craft by what it isnot;and we will not preach that fine craft is "better" than any other art form(i.e., we love graphic art and collect fine-art prints, drawings, and other work personally, but it's simply not the focus of this gallery concept). 

That said, we do aim to celebrate the principles, enunciated most clearly by the Bauhaus movement, that the distinction between "artist" and "craftsperson" is and should be blurred, and that "form follows function." In other words, we have always been moved by objects that elevate functionality to art.

Skill is a big piece of the puzzle too. Why are some human beings still driven to spend a lifetime mastering an analog skill, even in our digital world? Most of the fine-craft artists we most revere have spent many thousands of hours honing their skills to take the materials of the natural world and to shape those materials according to their artistic vision. We find that kind of commitment awe-inspiring, worth celebrating, and worth preserving.

And last but not least, in most examples of what we consider fine craft---even with the benefit of hard-earned mastery---there is persistence and willfulness. By that we mean that fine craft is rarely easy: Even the most skilled furniture artist may spend weeks on a single piece; a ceramic masterwork might crack in its final firing; the couture sewer may draw blood with the needle. Yet they persist.

And we believe that in the marrying of artistry, skill, and persistence, there can be something transcendent. What exactly? Well that's what we aim to explore together here.