Etsy's just another craft fair that's now allowing resale.

Charm bracelet by Jennifer Jones Jewelry.

Jennifer Jones makes handmade statement jewelry from vintage brooches, pins, buttons, and the occasional Tabasco sauce bottle. Since she’s my former painting student and friend, we frequently talk shop. Recently, she’s been telling me that Etsy, the e-commerce website focusing on handmade craft items, has started allowing the resale of manufactured goods.

Maybe the New York Times can wax philosophical about the difference between ‘handmade’ and ‘mass-produced’ but we artists understand the difference. It isn’t about the tools and supplies you use; it’s about personally guiding the work through every step of the process.

Enamel flower necklace by Jennifer Jones. There is no way to mass-produce an assemblage of this nature. 

If you’ve done time on the art-fair circuit, you know that allowing manufactured goods is the kiss of death for a venue’s high-end craftsmen. It adulterates the brand, and it brings in the wrong audience—an audience which can’t distinguish the craftsmanship of a $500 piece from a mass-produced $50 copy. Nevertheless, it seems like sooner or later almost every venue succumbs to the temptation.

Freakonomics had this to say about it:

Etsy’s latest move is entirely in line with the history of handmade goods, a history that is more complicated than the simple term “handmade” implies. The artisans have run head-on into the problem that led to the Industrial Revolution: Making things by hand is slow. Really slow.

That’s kind of missing the point. We don’t live in an age where the major issue is making more stuff in less time. In fact, we are flooded in cheap goods. Right now, we Americans can’t compete in the cheap-goods market. Whether our craft is writing software or creating brilliant jewelry from castoffs, we are not selling a product but a process, one that frequently yields arrestingly good results.

Bracelet cuff made of vintage enameled pansies and some other stuff, by Jennifer Jones.

I had a designer friend with a unique and locally-popular line of clothes. She tried to scale it up, and she got lost in the vagaries of offshore manufacturing. When she was done, she had a product that would have been at home at Target—in fact, she didn’t even have that, because she was a rank amateur at the business of international sourcing. She sacrificed what she did best chasing a mirage, and her product line died completely.

Meanwhile, Jennifer keeps making these one-off items, and her market is worldwide. 

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

Artisan This

Artisan Tostitos? Seriously?

I’m thinking of a new advertising slogan: Artisan Art. In a world where one can buy Artisan Bread, Artisan Cheese, and mass-produced Artisan Tortilla Chips,the term “artisan” has been devalued. May as well jump right in.

During the Renaissance, the individuality of the artist was not of particular importance—he was celebrated for his competence at composition, drafting and rendering.(The outlier in this was Rembrandt, who did not in fact achieve his greatest fame until his rediscovery in the 19th century.) With the Industrial Revolution, the expressive aspects of art became more valued. This trend accelerated with the convulsive wars that engulfed the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Mechanized death is the ultimate dehumanizer; in response we sought the very personal in art.

By the middle of the twentieth century, the artist’s personal expression, his mark-making, and his subjective viewpoint were paramount. We have now swung back a little from that place, but until the world stops being a machine, the artist will never again hide behind a perfectly-realized technique.

 Tsujita LA Artisan Noodle. In the old days, we called this "cooking."

That’s true in the fine arts, but is it true in craft? I think so. The proliferation of the term artisan reflects a general longing for hand-craft. My friend Jane Bartlett is both an artist (when she dyes fabrics) and an artisan (when she assembles those fabrics into wearable garments).

But the term is somehow cheapened when applied to routine competence. To draw a distinction between two bagel shops because one has “artisans” boiling their bagels and one has bakers boiling their bagels is just plain silly.

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!