Hand Made Is Best Made

Cherry blossom hand carved in a cherry spoon.

This has been a difficult year. Covid-19 has slowed everything down except for hospitals and anywhere there is an outbreak of the virus. Right now, as I write this, Canadians are in the midst of the toughest government restrictions since March. Many Canadians are stressed and anxious worried about their kids, their parents, their grandparents, their jobs, the future. We hear reports that Canadians are packing on the pounds from stress eating, and liquor sales are way up. Our coping mechanisms are clearly out of whack.

Are you worried about Christmas and what it will look like this year? Don’t fall into the trap of pandemic purchasing, hoping you can buy love with a few clicks on your computer. Instead, why not accept that Christmas will be different and pivot your plans? Buy a tool and make a Christmas gift!

Hand made gift box

Making your own gifts has more benefits than you might think at first. When I was young, we heated our house with a wood stove, and my dad used to say, “The person who heats their house with wood warms themselves twice: once cutting the wood and once more with a fire.” I think the same applies to creating gifts. When I create a gift for someone, I am filled with love twice.

I believe anticipation is important for our social and mental health. Instant gratification (a click today on Amazon and delivery tomorrow by Prime) robs us of the joy and anticipation we feel as we take a few hours to make something truly unique and hand-made for someone we love. Wrapping that gift made with love for someone we love is a very different thing than fighting the crowds (pre-Covid), or panic purchasing with the Amazon app on Black Friday. Instead, with hand-made gifts we can imagine and hope for the joy we will see in the person we plan to give this very personal, thoughtful creation. Our hearts are warmed with love twice.

Pepper grinder purchased second hand getting a hand made upgrade

If you don’t want to make something yourself but still want to give a personal gift, support a local small business or artist and purchase something hand-made. Ask them to personalize it, even if they don’t advertise this as an option. The other day, I was commissioned to create a special Christmas gift for a baker, and the client asked me to put a note in the package. I personalized the gift, wrote a note with wording from the client, and wrapped it with the shavings I had from the carving process. This gift will be a truly unique sharing of love.

Don’t let this pandemic steal your joy or make Christmas a disappointment. Instead, take control and hand-make Christmas with all the love you want your people to feel from you.

* This blog post was inspired by Joshua Klein.

The Problem With Perfection

Tall Ship Close Up

I don’t often wax philosophical in this blog, but as the demand for my carvings has grown so much I am left with the question of why that is so. Why do so many want to buy my carvings or commission me to make a unique carving for them or for a loved one? Why not buy a 3-D printed item? Why am I not in competition with the laser-cut, the CNC machined products? Why am I not afraid of the factory, the reproduced and infinitely replicateable and therefore cheap volume discount products?

The author of this article in the New York Times (re-tweeted on Twitter by @maxwellarm) said something very interesting, “We want to know where our free-range eggs come from, and where our coffee beans are grown and roasted. We also want the vessels we use to consume those things to embody a deeper story about craftsmanship and creativity.”

Letter Carving Seminar Students working hard.

In the article, potter David Reid made an insightful comment, “People are looking to have their humanity reflected back at them.” Marshall Mcluhan said that media or technology are extensions of ourselves. We have dreams of perfection, so it makes sense that we want a reflection of that around us. In my mind, this is the attraction of the perfectly linear designs we see in architecture and home decor. These are the brushed stainless or nickel hardware on cabinets, the perfectly flat, shiny, fake stone countertops, the square, linear trim.

But there is only so much perfection we can accept. Hence the creepy movies where the psycho bad guy lives in the hyper-perfect world, where everything is crisp white (so white it hurts the eyes) and nothing is ever out of place. I believe we are unsettled by this perfection because we know we are unable to attain it. We know this so well that we distrust any human or human made product that claims perfection. We know the perfect guy in the movie is going to have an evil side – somewhere, buried, so we look for it and we are ready when it appears. The problem with perfection is that it is impossible and when we find the inevitable flaw, it becomes all we can see. It stands out and laughs at our feeble attempts to be something we are not.

Mahogany Fruit Bowl

As I noted in a previous post, David Savage has some excellent points about perfection, quality, and the struggle of the maker. Perfection is cold. It is aloof. It is unhuman. If we want the things around us to reflect our humanity, then perhaps this explains the interest and growth in the handmade. In the article, Fashion designer Steven Alan said, “There is beauty in imperfection and having items that are really handmade.”I agree, to a point. We would not accept an imperfect factory made item. That means poor quality control and uncaring factory owners. No one accepts that. However, we see beauty in imperfection when we know the maker and the struggle he or she took to make something. We love the struggle because we can identify with it, unlike a machine-made product. We want to know that love, care, and attention has been part of the process.

My carvings could be reproduced and even made perfect by a CNC machine. But they would cease to have that je ne sais quoi quality, and would have no soul. I believe that art reflects its maker and the viewer. I believe that we want to see the world through the eyes of the artist. I believe that we want to see evidence of love in the art. I believe we want to have a little piece of that love of the artist. This is the appeal of the human, handmade, art. This is the appeal of the craft market, the art studio, the public art, the commissioned piece of art and the craftsmanship we so enjoy. It makes a statement about the world and, perhaps more importantly, about we ourselves and who we are.