David Barnett
... but it's a fun one to walk through and nearly 50,000 people do exactly that.

I'm going to assume that when you say you 'blundered' into a Winter Park craft show, you mean the Winter Park Sidewalk Arts Festival.

Bill, like most of the better arts and crafts shows, the Winter Park show is juried, but if your work is of sufficient (not always but usually above average) quality, produced mainly by the craftsperson, not knockoffs or obviously mass-produced, and if you follow the guidelines, it's not as difficult to get accepted as you might imagine. The hefty exhibitor fee ($475+) weeds out the worst of the riffraff and the buyers are usually saavy and tasteful enough to make few acquisition mistakes on the higher-priced offerings. But the truth is, as art festivals go, WP is middle tier, though in the top quarter of the middle tier, I'd say.

One thing, though, the WPSAF tries for a balance of arts and crafts that offer a wide range of prices for the represented demographics, so there will be some kitchy offerings and some affordable pieces for every price point. One has to remember this is an open air festival and everyone is welcome. Most major indoor shows, such as the ACC shows and others with more stringent jurying and higher entry fees also charge high enough admissions to further qualify the buyers (Coconut Grove Arts Festival, SOFA, and so on).

By the way, you would never find those hinges or substandard construction issues in the work of ACC exhibitors, and if the judges spotted them mixed in with otherwise well-made objects, they would invariably be asked to remove them.

In the jewelry category, artisans at the better shows are expected to make their own findings for the most part, and a good percentage of the work is fabricated rather than cast. I'm not so familiar with their furniture requirements but am not surprised knobs and pulls are hand made.

While it's not nearly as difficult to get accepted in WPSAF as the juried American Crafts Council retail shows or the Paradise City Arts Festivals (Northampton and Marlborough, MA), it's still an old and respected show, but most definitely not in the same league as the big shows. There is some crossover, though, and some WP exhibitors also do the ACC shows.

Not to sound snobby, but the WPSAF is not what I think of as high end at all. When you ask five figures at a craft show and the smiling customer pulls out his or her checkbook without batting an eye, that's high end.

Take a look at the ACC shows to see the next tier or two up in the crafts show circuits. By the way, you'll always find affordable crafts at ACC craft shows. Many exhibitors manage to offer a range of bread-and-butter objects to at least make their entry fees, travel costs, and so on, but hope for a few sales at the top of their line to make it all worthwhile.