One of my most popular entries is my “Critique on the Handmade Movement” post. I posted that entry over a year ago and I still get comments on it. Naturally I read them. I read all of the internet’s blog comments.
A recent article on Slate.com by Sara Mosle brings up some other points that I had neglected in my original post. Bizarre feminist vitriol aside, (I find accusing women of being “bad feminists” to be sort of unproductive. Bad feminists exist but much like invoking Godwin’s law, it just weakens your stance overall to use it.) she made some excellent points. Namely that the pricing structure really ruins everything:
If anything, Etsy exerts a downward pressure on prices. At the local craft fair, an artist could charge a premium for homemade goods, because the buyer had few options. But Etsy puts the artist in Brooklyn in direct competition with the artist in Dubuque, or London. This forces each one to offer ever more attractive deals. Most artists can’t drastically increase volume (the usual answer to slim margins), because the items are supposed to be one-of-a-kind, not mass-produced, in keeping with the site’s whole ethos.
One of the secret reasons I love Etsy is that I know I am sometimes getting an absolute steal for a really lovely handmade item. Like seriously criminal. Its also one of the reasons I decided not to have a shop of my own. There was no way I could get away with charging what I thought my time and expertise was truly worth. Etsy’s pricing essentially competes with manufacturing pricing. That’s insane! Its basically telling artists that your 10 hours of work is worth maybe the 5 minutes it took to manufacture this t-shirt and sell it at the GAP.
Well the actual truth is that if you were smart, your handmade item would just be a sample or a prototype, and you’d get that shirt manufactured so you don’t have to make 20 billion owl t-shirts. As this NYTimes article mentions, there is such thing as handmade burnout. And suddenly when you realize that YOU are the machine, hey actual machines don’t sound so bad.
I’ve just discovered that my favorite Internet time and $$$ sink, Etsy, has a nice series of work in progress videos of some of their sellers. I like how some of the videos have the same relaxing qualities of the How Its Made series on the discovery channel. I also like gawking at people’s workspaces and tools.
A couple of my favorites:
I typically don’t really enjoy learning for learning’s sake. Which doesn’t mean I don’t like to learn. I in fact, love it. But I like to have a reason to do so. Which is why I never paid attention during math class. My instincts were right. I did not need that crap at 16. However I find myself interested in taking a few math classes these days because the skills would be valuable for me right now. To those High School math teachers with your gloating “I told you so’s” No you didn’t. I doubt that I would have retained anything during the last ten years or so. There is a time and place for everything and the time for three-dimensional geometry is actually closer to now than it was when I was in school. Unless I needed to calculate the angles between a boy and me, there was no need for me know this stuff. I think I would be able to learn math now more than ever. I have the desire and the actual need.
My artwork often drives my learning process. I have learned quite a few things simply because I needed to know how to do it. Machine shop skills, basic electronics, and sewing would be such examples. And now I find I really, really must learn to knit. Because of this:
Seriously adorable. The little blue button eyes for the owls are calling out to me. Back in college I did try joining a knitting group and learned to knit one, pearl one but had no real project goals so my learning never progressed beyond a very long, likely unfinished, acrylic (yech) scarf. But now I really must have this sweater. The sweet part is that the designer has the pattern up for free online here. I am also uh, “between jobs” So ostensibly I can devote time to learning to knit the damn thing. Despite my usual DIY approach to learning, I think I need to be mentored through this sweater because I really have no idea what I am doing. I need knitting friends.
About 7 years ago I began trawling the web looking for people who who made and sold handmade clothes. It was then that I knew I was witnessing the first glimmers of what is now the enormously popular craft “revolution”. And up until recently I was pretty convinced that it was indeed revolutionary. People making their own soaps and hand-towels! The spirit of Che had descended on the US at last! When I discovered Etsy.com a couple years ago it was love at first click. I bought a felt brooch that looked like a fried egg.
But lately the whole thing is beginning to wear thin on me. Every time I see a “buy handmade” sticker or button I feel a little irritable. What really irritates me is that the movement has essentially just spawned more crap for us to buy. Its still at its heart, an exercise in consumerism. And like anything that starts out cool and unique, it becomes quickly gobbled up by the mainstream (or just urban outfitters) and re-packaged back to us with faux hand-stitching. Go on Etsy now and its just all this STUFF. A lot of it is pretty terrible too–but that’s to be expected in a creative field. Deep down inside we still love shopping, and we like to feel cooler than our peers. For the moment, buying handmade satisfies these desires extremely well.
Beyond the stuff aspect, I also dislike that there is a sort disingenuous idea that it is somehow a moral better to buy handmade. Especially when you take into account the enormous amount of waste that goes into handmade. When something is ethically manufactured (ie lean–for a great blog on lean manufacturing in clothing please go here), the whole process has been studied and analyzed down to the number of stitches that go into a hem. This actually greatly reduces material waste. As someone who does do handmade–I can honestly say it is extremely wasteful in terms of materials and labor. I make too many mistakes. I have more scraps than I know what to do with. I waste thread and time because I am probably unknowingly doing it the “hard way”. Also of note is the fact that almost all the materials used to make homemade things are coming from places like China. There are very few textile mills in the US now. There are some in Europe but they mainly cater to the couture set. Things like buttons and zippers are manufactured in Asia. Not to mention that many of these shops do not buy their materials wholesale–which adds to costs. A homemade commodity does not get to neatly escape these problematic manufacturing issues.
That said I love the homemade stuff. I am a slave to Etsy. I love the personal feeling customer service and the creativity and Shops like anti-factory, use second-hand scraps which greatly cuts down on material costs and waste. But I take issue that buying homemade is better. Its just another form of consumerism.
Fandom and obsessive hobbies are very interesting to me, mainly because I don’t particularly view myself an ardent fan of anything. I enjoy certain people, art, activities etc. immensely but I never quite get that glint in my eye. So this piece on scapbookers in the LA Times was a a great read. Who knew these ladies could be so vicious? If I were a PhD student I would be seriously considering writing a long treatment on how scrapbooking (and perhaps other crafting) might be parallel to the Victorian Arts and Crafts movement, in that scrapbooking exposes sexual repression and/or other lack of freedom to express oneself. Or something like that. I am sure many would disagree, but I am enjoying my Freudian explanation right now.
