Semester III: The Hand Made Market

03/02/2015


Blog entry 8:

At present with the rise of the internet and social media, those who create hand made items have the ability to advertise their unique objects. The handmade market has become very popular due to hand made often being thought of as attention to detail and one off, it appears to me that hand made or hand finished items are now often associated with luxury, due to the time and effort expended to create the items.

As researched in blog entry 6, John Smedley pride themselves on creating luxury products, which are often hand finished. The term handmade or hand finished brings to my mind that a product has a human touch, meaning that each item is cared about when being produced; I feel that my work should have this quality.

There are a number of disagreements on what exactly is considered handmade: Some feel that if pre - existing parts are combined or 'up cycled' to create something new that this has been done by hand and its therefore hand made. Others however believe that hand made refers to every aspect of an item having been made by hand (e.g. every link in a chain for a necklace rather than using a ready made chain).

Excerpt from Sara Tan's 2013 article on the popular online market Etsy and defining the hand made. (Available below)



“Let’s face it — you’d be hard pressed to find any item that is truly ‘handmade’,’” Wesner argues. “I sell jewelry that I make myself. This is considered ‘handmade’, right? My jewelry is primarily silver. I don’t mine the silver myself — there’s no silver mine in my Manhattan apartment basement. If I make multiples of a part, I don’t pour the molds myself — there’s no foundry in my apartment basement, either. I ship my designs in cardboard boxes that I buy online from a jewelry box supplier, and I am almost positive they are not handmade, and that the cardboard isn’t hand pressed. ‘Handmade’ is such a loosely defined term.” (Tan, 2013)

http://www.bustle.com/articles/6124-etsy-changes-their-policy-on-handmade-goods-to-allow-items-produced-by-manufacturing-partners


This makes me question whether or not my embroidery actually fits into the category of hand made or not, and how this might affect marketing of my work in the future.