Is It Handmade?

Good question.  As a maker, what is considered handmade is a very frustrating question.  I participate into a craft market which prides itself on only accepting vendors who create handmade art, but what they think is handmade is not necessarily the same as what I think.  In fact, I believe we need to split the word “handmade” into several different categories, so people know what they’re really buying.  And even then, there are a lot of grey areas.

First thing to consider is whether handmade needs to be made by hand? Weirdly enough, I will answer no. At least not exclusively. I use tools, everyone does. Pottery wheels, sewing machines, paint brushes, soldering irons, you can’t craft anything without tools. Sure, hands are involved, but touching the piece at all time while you’re making it is not a requirement to be handmade. An extreme example could be when a potter programs their 3D printer to create a 3D printed pottery piece. I believe it’s handmade, because they created the pattern, and programed the machine. Although I would add that the first one is handmade, but subsequent ones are copies.

The second thing I would like to take into account is the length of time it takes to create a piece. For ceramics, it’s almost impossible to say precisely, because the process is done is multiples stages, and checking on the piece and letting it dry is a less involved part of the process but you still have to monitor your pieces or risk passing the window when you will be able to carve your pieces or add a handle. It can take up to 3-4 weeks to finish a piece including drying times, although I’m sure some sculptors work on their pieces for much longer.

In contrast, I met a crafter who created earrings out of tin cans.  She cut out shapes in old cans and attached them to earrings hoops.   Technically, it’s handmade, there is nothing I can complain about.  They use a recycled product and create a new object whose function is completely different.  As a potter, it can be frustrating to see crafters create a niche product made out of cheap material which takes them a minimal amount of work to create and can be sold at a low price . However, I realized while writing this and looking at pictures of tin can earrings online that some are very elaborate and labor intensive.  And that’s true in every craft. There are quick and easy ceramic products (i.e. hanging ornaments) that can be sold for cheap and are still handmade.  I don’t make them because it’s boring, but it doesn’t mean that they’re not legitimately handmade.

The third part of what handmade means to me is that it shouldn’t be a copy. If you make stickers /prints/tee-shirt/tote bags with your artwork, technically the original work is handmade but the copies are not, and yet it is considered perfectly acceptable for artists to sell these alongside their originals, under the “ handmade” umbrella. Imagine if a potter gave a mug to a factory in China and asked them to create 500 replicas , claiming that they were handmade because the original mug was.

My point is that it is sometimes disheartening because at craft fairs and on online sites like Etsy, you compete with other vendors who might need five minutes to make a piece or just order copies of their original art work when it takes you days to create a piece from start to finish, and you cannot just order copies of your own work. Although potters themselves can make copies of their own work if they create molds, but the ceramic community as a whole looks down on this technique when no one seems to mind if a painter or a photographer orders one hundred copies of their work.

It’s hard, because potential customers don’t necessarily realize the work that goes into making a piece. It can be true even in the same craft: Buyers will complain that your prices are too high and buy a mug from a fellow potter who charges 5 dollars less for a product that took half the time it took you to make your piece. But there is no point in complaining of course. People will like what they like, and it’s up to the artist to educate the public on their process.

So when you see a “handmade” product, ask yourself (or the craftsperson) how long it took to make and whether it’s a copy or an original. Handmade should be slow and unique.

If we want to go deeper to explain what “handmade” means, I would slip the word into four different categories.

My first category would be handmade from scratch.  You buy or collect “raw” material (clay, glass, leather, fabric, yarn, non-processed food, paint and canvas, pen and paper, wood, flowers, etc…) and you create something functional or artistic (or both) by transforming it using your hands or tools.

cloth rolls (photo attribution: Grendelkhan, Rolls of cloth for sale at Mood 3, CC BY-SA 4.0)

leather drying

(image attribution: Ekaterina Kvelidze, Leather drying, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Clay

This one seems straightforward but the fact is that even this category is not black and white and very few makers create something absolutely from scratch and can claim to be 100% handmade.  For example, some potters dig and process their own clay and I don’t.  I delegate part of my crafting process to a manufacturer which creates the clay for me.  So my work is not as “handmade” as these potters.  But then, my work is more “handmade” than other potters because one of my techniques requires me to make colored clay with stain before I can create my pieces so in a way I manufacture my own colored clay.   I also create my own glazes (plural, I made two!) when other potters buy their glazes.  There are so many variables.  At the other hand of the spectrum, I know potters who build their own kilns and make their own tools getting as close to 100% homemade as you can be.  Although there must be some people that would argue that using power tools to build your kiln is cheating, somehow, in the same way that some potters believe that using an electronic kiln is cheating. There are so many layers in the process I know best, that it is impossible to define exactly what 100% handmade ceramics would be, and it’s probably true for all other crafts.

Another important point is that what raw material means for crafters can be extremely diverse. Some people make sculptures out of books and recycled plastic bottles or earrings out of aluminum cans, as I mentioned earlier.  Any object you  can think of has been used as a raw material by somebody at some point to create art.  Some were a finished functional product (or used to be functional) but the original purpose was highjacked to create something different.

Trash People

(photo attribution: The original uploader was Leonce49 at German Wikipedia., Trash People at Cologne, CC BY-SA 2.0 DE)

Book sculpture

(photo attribution: Delphine Dallison, Scotland Book Sculptures 3, CC BY-SA 4.0 )

My second category is handmade half and half.  It’s exactly like cooking using a pre-made mix of pancakes.  You need to add some eggs and milk and cook the pancakes, but someone else already did half the work.  In this case the original product is the same as the end product, but you’re altering it to make it unique.  There is a certain amount of creativity attached to it, but in my opinion, it’s only 50% handmade at best.  For example if you buy a print and paint over it but you can still see elements of the first print and they’re an inherent part of your design, you’re half and half.  If you buy second-hand clothes, keep their purpose (a shirt is still used as a shirt, not cut up and the fabric reused to make a cushion) but add pieces to it, strips of fabrics or a pocket from another garment, this is half and half.  I know it’s not black and white but you get the idea.

However, if you buy a white plate and paint an elaborate décor on it, your raw material happens to be a plate, but the entire decoration is yours.  I have seen amazing tie-dye shirts that are real work of art. The raw material is a shirt but the art is made from scratch.  However, if you buy a white plate and use decals to create your décor, you’re getting close to not being handmade at all…  Although it would depend how you use the decals, but I would say the amount of creativity is pretty low (10%?) compared to a handmade plate (=made from scratch, not ordered at the store) decorated by hand.  Again, it’s not black and white, and there is probably someone out there layering decals in an amazingly creative way that no one has ever done before.  Furthermore, you can design your own decals, so that would be handmade from scratch… until you use it more than once (which is kind of the point when you order decals) and fall back into making copies of your own art work. Defining handmade is so tricky, you quickly run around in circles, simply because art itself is so hard to define!

The third category is handmade accent, which is just a step down from previous one.  You buy a print and you add a flourish with a golden pen for example.  You buy a wood carving and add a little color to it. You buy a plaster statue and underline the eyes.  You buy second-hand clothes and add a couple of colorful buttons.  Customizing.  It is still creative, but most of the creative process was done ahead of you.  The end product is used in the same way as the original product was with a tiny creative addition to the original.   

The last category I will call handmade resale.  It might be less intuitive but should be out in the open. There are people who hunt handmade objects for cheap (for example at Goodwill) and attempt to sell them again, usually online, with a markup to make a profit.  It is totally legitimate to do this, but people should realize when they buy these products that the original artist is not earning a cent.  It feels a little disingenuous to use the label “handmade” to sell stuff when you actually had no hand in the process at all. Another label used in this case is “vintage” whether the piece is a hundred or three years old.   A lot of people at craft markets ask me “did you make this?” as if it wasn’t the point of such markets!   Maybe they are becoming weary of the label “handmade” because it covers very different realities, like the words “authentic” or “homemade” or “genuine” are losing their meaning by overuse . That’s why it was important to me to define what “handmade” means (or should mean) in more details so it doesn’t lose all its power for good.