What does 'handmade' mean to me?

photo and styling credit: Tyler Payne and Francis Chan

Lately I have been reminiscing about my childhood as I often compare it to my own kid's, mostly because I grew up without devices, video games, computers or the internet.  Outside of Saturday morning cartoons on a black and white telly, the most device-oriented entertainment I had in my childhood was the double tape deck I received for Christmas one year that allowed me to play dj and make up my own radio shows.   I did a lot of making as a kid, and my mom, aunts, and grandmas' all gave me hand-made gifts or sewed me dresses to wear for special occasions.  With my family's modest income, handmade was a necessity, not a privilege.  Handmade back in the late 70's/ 80's meant truly 'made by hand from scratch', and conjures up images of funky weaving, rustic pottery, quilts made from old dresses and aprons, baskets, and blue ducks.

Fast-forward to today, where the term 'handmade' is thrown around to add value to an item and ultimately make it more expensive than a mass-produced item.   Handmade terms are added onto items found in big-box stores to add value to items made overseas; words like 'woven', 'hand-blocked', 'hand-loomed', 'hand-crafted' are all used interchangeably.  Etsy has started changing it's policy and definition of what 'handmade' means to their site, adding that sellers can now out-source production and ship from manufacturers both local and abroad as long as they can verify that the original design is their own (see this article for more info).  I see this really changing how 'handmade' is perceived, creating even more confusion to the average person, who is already not quite sure how things are made. 

Over the past few years of being a full-time maker I catch myself judging items I see marked 'handmade' as somehow not quite 'handmade'- depending on if they were made 'from scratch' or whether they were put together with parts manufactured elsewhere.  I realized recently that my judgement wasn't really fair and that ultimately I am searching for what handmade means to me and to what I make.  A few years ago I began to make some of my pieces using slip-casting moulds made from my own designs, making my work look more refined, and less 'handmade'.  A frequent comment at the Crawl this year was how I get things to look so uniform- although most of the time, the comments came when people were holding a wheel-thrown piece of mine.  It's interesting to think through how comments from people at the Crawl kind of sit with me over time.  A few years back it was a comment I over-heard saying that my work was 'a bit too handmade looking' that had me scrutinize my glazing method to really clean up my designs.

I don't want to simply react and make changes within my handmade business solely based on the shifts within the handmade industry, but I can't ignore what is happening to the ever-evolving idea of what handmade means.  It has had me re-think how I want to make in the studio recently and I can't quite say for sure how this will change my work.

Recently I have started working with a couple of new clay bodies.  One is a beautiful but pernickety porcelain that is double the cost of my previous porcelain.  The other is a stoneware tan clay body that has a lot of flecks in it.   I have spent more time on the wheel and hand-building (like the porcelain herringbone platters above), attempting to get back into a rhythm that could perhaps allow me to make more of my mugs on the wheel again.  I've changed some of my glazing methods with some simpler glaze designs that loosen up my work in the glazing department.  I think there is a shift I'm working towards within my work, and I'm not sure what will become of it.   I started painting again and that feels really good.  It's informing my ceramics in a different way so I'm pretty excited to see where that can take me.

I think at the core of handmade is the notion that the hand of the maker creates an intrinsic value in what her or she creates.  Maybe that's thinking too highly of one's ability to make or the skill or craftsmanship of an object, but I think the story of handmade goes so much further when it comes from the hand, because it's closer to the heart.  As I see other makers move into becoming designers and there-by removing themselves from some of the making process, I wonder whether this is a direction I should be planning to take myself.  Then I get lost in throwing a bowl or hand-building a platter with my hands full of clay and somehow I want to re-discover the handmade spirit that got me started on this path in the first place.

I'm curious to hear what you think about some of the changes that are happening with Etsy, or with makers turning more into designers and outsourcing production.  I think the viability of a handmade business creates bottom lines for people who ultimately need to find ways to make their work more profitable.  Clearly there is no right or wrong, just a ton of different paths and options of ways to grow or sustain one's work.  I think those of us who are studio makers and full-time at it are constantly wondering how to make it a little easier financially or easier with making/production time. I welcome the notion that 'handmade' isn't going to mean the same thing to everything, however at this moment I feel like a truly handmade mode of making still resonates with me and my work. 

designer verses maker

I'm in a bit of a conundrum these days, trying to sort out my next move.  It's as though I need to go back to the drawing room of what I want  'dahlhaus' to be.  When I started out on this journey to make a living from my art, I thought about this dilemma a bit, but left it well behind for the immediate issues surrounding making unique work that could become my signature, and that I could make consistently well.  I was grappling with the day to day concepts of how to get my work 'out there' and how to get people to buy it so I could keep doing what I loved.  Along the way I found out what people liked about my work and began to tweak it so that people would begin to love it and want to buy it.  There's a big shift that goes on in that stage and it is very exciting to have shops start to contact me (instead of me contacting shops), have some blog and press mentions, and start to feel like maybe, just maybe, I can really make a living at this. 

So now I'm in the grind of making.  I am a great maker, it's what I seem to do best.  I've never thought of myself as a designer, but these days I find myself envying them.  The idea of coming up with an amazing ceramic design and then passing it along to a manufacturer to do the making.   I used to scoff at this with my art-school turn up your nose to everything that seems like the easy way out.  But now, in the midst of all my making and the constant requests by new shops to wholesale my work, I dream of passing along some of my work to a manufacturer to make it for me, because I can't do it all by myself anymore.  I have a whole host of ideas of how to avoid my work being 'made in china'.  I have all sorts of reasons why it wouldn't quite be the same to have my work made somewhere else- it wouldn't feel or look the same.  I think about raising my prices to meet the demand of my work better so I could avoid this (it's a good start).  I think about expanding my studio to have a staff or 2  (and all the issues in expanding and staffing that would come with this).  So it's a conundrum, you see.  Financially not much seems very viable, and yet, it seems a shame to just throw up my hands without at least searching for a way around it.  At the very least, it's not a terrible place to be embarking on- a crossroad in life has always been an exciting place to be standing at.

Harper's Bazaar Gift Guide

It came to my attention this past weekend the my Striped Bottle Vases that are being sold through Anthropologie are part of Harper Bazaar's Stylish Gifts under $100 guide!  Although I'm not sure I would call them 'Retro Rose Holders', it's pretty exciting to see my hand-made all by me vases on their site beside all these big-name designers with made in china stuff.  CRAZY!!

From my phone Friday & thoughts on 'handmade'

The family farm

What a great truck

Stirfry with tofu dinner served in one of my low bowls

I love it when the poppies start coming out:)

Hello and thank you all for the warm response on my give-a-way so far! So great to hear all your thoughts on my vases, along with some of your responses to what makes the perfect vase etc.  I really do value your comments and must add a couple of my own- first off that I don't throw out work unless it is completely un-useable.  Most of it comes home with me and fills my own shelves- I usually can't bear to part with my hard-work that easily.  That said, over the course of all my years making ceramics, I'm sure my 'shard pile' is as big as the next ceramic artist's- unfortunately it takes a whole lot of pots that have mistakes on them before you get the good ones out.  However,  I do believe in 1000 years, my shards will be some of the prettier ones that anthropologists will dig up.  That is one of the amazing things about ceramics, I feel.  Pottery and fired clay are some of the oldest forms of art that have been dug up and discovered.  

Also, some thoughts about perfect/imperfections etc.  I do love the 'hand of the artist', ie the hand-made look being present in work, whether it be obvious or not.  A lot of my work has 'imperfections' that I see as unintended accidents that happened along the way.  Some of it is part of the way the work is made and as that, I'm quite comfortable having these 'imperfections' be part of the integrity of the work.  Some things- such as the small pinholes or the glaze looking mottled, are things that I want to avoid.  And while some things are super small and barely noticeable, I feel as though I want to send my best work out there, put my best foot forward, and not my almost best.  Since a lot of these vases are heading to retail places or being sold online, I think people have come to expect a certain level of perfection when purchasing an item in those places as opposed from me in my studio.

A couple of years ago I overheard a comment about my work that made me laugh, be kind of angry, and at the same time, recognize something in my work that I was missing out on. It happened during an open studio event that happens each November- someone was coming out of my studio while I was heading towards the door and said "I think 'so-and-so' would really like that work, except perhaps it looks a little too handmade."  Sometimes I feel like my work really straddles the line between looking handmade and manufactured.  Partly because of my process of cutting out shapes that can be repeated it can be hard for some to know the difference between them being all glazed or having decals as the decoration.  A lot of my early inspiration came not only from abstract paintings I had done, but also from mid-century scandinavian ceramics- which was manufactured.  And since I'm slip-casting some of my work now, it looks even less hand-made then my wheel-thrown work.  All that said, the work sits somewhere in the middle for people- sort of handmade, sort of design-based, and for now I'm ok with that.  Some day perhaps I'll embrace one over the other, but for now I'm making what feels right for me and I'm so glad that people are loving it!