Handmade Gets Industrialized

While in a big box store recently, I cruised the seasonal aisles. Among the glass and glitter covered ornaments were “handmade” rip-offs. Fabric and knit ornaments embellished with applique-like patches, embroidery, beads and sequins. Not only were they mass produced & poorly manufactured (glued rather than sewn, stuffing spilling out of seams, embellishments coming off or completely missing), as a whole they weren’t all that attractive.

I find it interesting that we’ve come full circle. The industrial revolution all but killed craftsmanship and the impulse to make things by hand by producing readily available, inexpensive alternatives. Advertising then caught up, created the perception of need for mass-produced items and invented the modern consumer. In the years since, different groups and movements have resurrected and embraced the qualities and virtues of traditional craft, “women’s work,” and the do-it-yourself impulse. Apparently we’ve been so successful that the commercial manufacturing sector wants a piece of the action.

But industry has missed the point. Those of us who make and seek out handmade alternatives to mass-produced items do so for a multitude of reasons beyond the look of the products.  Multi-national corporations can co-opt the current aesthetic of handmade, but they cannot reproduce the grassroots nature of the handmade movement. Corporations cannot commercialize the love I have for a woman I never met, my husband’s great-aunt, and her handmade Christmas ornaments that have pride of place on our tree every year. They cannot mass-produce the fun, laughter, hot glue burns, martini mishaps & wacky ornaments that live in my memory from Xtreme Crafting Xmas parties I hosted in the past. The love, care, imagination, craftsmanship, tactility, history, reuse, upcycling, small footprint, local economy, personal connection and personal touch of handmade cannot be industrialized.