Why do people say "handmade"?

[Frodo]

3 hours ago, Tugadude said:

Weaving with your feet would be quite a feat.

 

Edited June 10, 2021 by Frodo

[Tugadude]

Hey, with all of the serious crap going on we have to have a little fun.

[fredk]

I've read most of this discussion. I think I'll add my perspective now. Just the way I find it all and how my family, my friends, associates and the general public in N.I. view it

Since about the early 1970s 'Hand made' has become the short-hand way of indicating that something is made by a crafts person/people and hasn't come out of some mass-producing factory

Yes, a crafts person will use machinery to make the parts he/she needs to make that final product. But he/she will, maybe with one or more helpers, will make that item

My father was craftsman of sorts. He was a fully trained and qualified cabinet maker. He used to use drill presses, a planer-thicknesser, a Shop-Smith lathe, electric planers and more. He got the raw timbers in, worked them on his machines as needed and built the cabinet as was required. Even though he sometimes made a dozen of a certain style of bathroom cabinet no two were exactly the same, because they were 'hand made'. You want exactly the same? interchangeable parts? buy one made in a mass-producing factory

Its a habit of English speakers to reduce some concepts and ideas down to certain terms, even if that term is wrong, or to reduce phrases down to the least number of syllables  thus its quicker and handier to say 'hand made' than 'craftsperson made'

[Klara]

1 hour ago, fredk said:

....Since about the early 1970s 'Hand made' has become the short-hand way of indicating that something is made by a crafts person/people and hasn't come out of some mass-producing factory ...

I dare say people in France and Germany see it the same way.

Since things are beginning to clear up, I'll throw another term into the discussion: Home made. Which for some reason is bad ("Make your work look hand made, not home made") - unless it's cooking or baking. Home made bread is a good thing (well...), a home-knitted sweater not so much... Given that quite a number of craftspeople and artists work from home, I assume that home-made is short for "know-nothing no-skills hobbyist made"?

 

[fredk]

5 minutes ago, Klara said:

I dare say people in France and Germany see it the same way.

Since things are beginning to clear up, I'll throw another term into the discussion: Home made. Which for some reason is bad ("Make your work look hand made, not home made") - unless it's cooking or baking. Home made bread is a good thing (well...), a home-knitted sweater not so much... Given that quite a number of craftspeople and artists work from home, I assume that home-made is short for "know-nothing no-skills hobbyist made"?

The latest buzz word is 'Artisan'. Artisan coffee, artisan cheese, artisan sandwiches, artisan cakes.. . . . . etc.  Nowt has changed in how those things are made but put 'artisan' in front of the description of your 'hand made' sandwiches in your cafe and you can charge 3 or 4 times the normal price. Direct example; a cappuccino decaf coffee in Starbucks = about £2.80, go down the street, same coffee, made the same way with the same machines but 'artisan' = £6.50. Go to a local coffee & tea importer with a tea room, same coffee from them = £1.60. Guess what? people are flocking to buy the 'artisan' coffee, they are leaving the likes of Starbucks empty, and the wee local place, only the wise go there.

Put fancy words and fancy prices and the common folk will flock there because they think they'll get something special. My son and I call it the 'Kings new clothes' syndrome.

A deviation. When I had a photo studio I did children's portraits, sometimes family groups. I charged £25 to £30, for the sitting plus a selection of small proof prints. A group of photographers got together and formed the 'One Thousand' club. They charged £1000 for a portrait sitting. Just for the sitting. Minimum order was £1000, even if you just wanted one small photo. People flocked to them. I was told 'you must not be a very good photographer if you only charge £30'. I did put my prices up, a wee bit. The 'One Thousand' club also did weddings. Although they charged £1000 they weren't very good photographers. I and a few associates ended up re-shooting almost all the weddings done by the Club and re-doing a lot of their other work.

The common person can be blind-sided by fancy terms like 'hand made', 'genuine leather', 'Artisan . . . ,

 

PS. I was once given a jacket and the label said 'Genuine faux replacement leather type material' !

[Tugadude]

People are easily manipulated.  That's why companies spend billions of dollars on marketing.  Most people don't NEED much, but they are made to WANT.

Whether it be a bigger television or a better phone with multiple cameras, it seems the majority are seldom satisfied.  And you need look no further than Apple and Samsung to see the evidence.  

The part about homemade is an interesting one.  I would argue it is related to handmade, but I don't think too many products are marketed as homemade.  I do see "home style" used a fair bit.  

And the "artisan" thing?  I am a wet shaver and there are numerous companies calling their shaving soaps artisan.  Some are good, some are not.  Like many words, it really doesn't mean much anymore.  Because the people behind the words often lack integrity.  Not all, but most, I think.

[Frodo]

Interesting.  homemade means domestic manufacture 

                    handmade is made by hand or hand process

handmade

 adjective

Synonyms & Antonyms of handmade

created by a hand process rather than by a machine

• received a handmade sweater at the baby shower

Synonyms for handmade

• handcrafted, 
• handwrought

Words Related to handmade

• homemade, 
• man-made, 
• manual

• bespoke 
• (also bespoken), 
• crafted, 
• custom-built, 
• custom-made

Near Antonyms for handmade

• automatic, 
• machined, 
• mass-produced

 

[Handstitched]

Wow ! This has turned into quite a topic...again. 

The added bonus about what I do, is that I can have a beer  ..at lunch time  How many employers let you drink on the job?  Just .....thought I'd throw that into the discussion . 

HS

[Klara]

3 hours ago, Handstitched said:

Wow ! This has turned into quite a topic...again. 

The added bonus about what I do, is that I can have a beer  ..at lunch time  How many employers let you drink on the job?  Just .....thought I'd throw that into the discussion . 

HS

Everybody I ever worked for in Germany and France (there the red wine was at one point included in the meal paid for by the company). 

@fredk How long did the 1000-Club stay in business? And how did they manage to get any customers? That's the sort of cheek that drives me crazy... 

[Constabulary]

Definitions may differ in different countries but a term you often read in terms of small business made items in MANUFATUR. I know the translations may throw out different meaning. A MANUFAKTUR may differ in sizes (number of employees and so forth) depending on the branch but usually - nowadays - when you read MANUFAKTUR over here (like leather MANUFAKTUR, Glass MANUFAKTUR....) is most of the time is associated with a small business producing high quality goods in a rather small volume (again - depends on the definition) with a high amount of hand and / or art work.

Not sure if MANUFAKTUR has the same meaning worldwide and history for has changed the meaning but that pretty much the definition in the "old world" nowadays:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufaktur#Der_moderne_Begriff  (use googel translate)

Quote

The latest buzz word is 'Artisan'. Artisan coffee, artisan cheese, artisan sandwiches, artisan cakes.. . . . .

We don´t have to look far - same with sewing machine like ARTISAN or COWBOY or THOR. No one in Europe (I guess) would call his sewing Machine Co. COWBOY - of course it´s a different story in the US. It gives you a certain association with something most folks (in the US) are familiar with - the original Co. name is HIGHTEX IIRC - so calling it COWBOY is a marketing name tailored to the US market. THOR and ARTISAN of course gives certain associations with something else. Thats marketing! Not meant as an offense to the brand names!

Edited June 11, 2021 by Constabulary

[fredk]

5 hours ago, Handstitched said:

The added bonus about what I do, is that I can have a beer  ..at lunch time  How many employers let you drink on the job?  Just .....thought I'd throw that into the discussion . 

 

2 hours ago, Klara said:

Everybody I ever worked for in Germany and France (there the red wine was at one point included in the meal paid for by the company). 

No drinking alcohol during working hours with most businesses in N.I. Very much frowned upon here

 

2 hours ago, Klara said:

 

@fredk How long did the 1000-Club stay in business? And how did they manage to get any customers? That's the sort of cheek that drives me crazy... 

About 5 years. There were about 6 photographers. Yes, they got plenty of customers. They cleaned up in the wedding photos scene. £1000 to attend the wedding, £1000 for small album with proof photos (30 to 36 of 5 x 5 inch) and £1000 per finished album with 24 main photos (8 x8 or 8 x 10 inch). For that I charged a total of £250-ish, £200 was profit. 7 times out of 10 the photos were rubbish. When the wedding people tried to sue they lost and we, other photographers, got the job of re-doing the photos as far as could be done, which cost the couple another £2000 or so, for hiring suits, venues, new cake etc. To put this in more context; average weekly wage was about £160 then

[Handstitched]

@Klara I stand corrected ,  I'm  quite partial to a nice Shiraz   

HS

[Handstitched]

5 minutes ago, fredk said:

No drinking alcohol during working hours with most businesses in N.I. Very much frowned upon here

 

A'h the joys of being my own boss

HS

[Spyros]

15 hours ago, Klara said:

I dare say people in France and Germany see it the same way.

Since things are beginning to clear up, I'll throw another term into the discussion: Home made. Which for some reason is bad ("Make your work look hand made, not home made") - unless it's cooking or baking. Home made bread is a good thing (well...), a home-knitted sweater not so much... Given that quite a number of craftspeople and artists work from home, I assume that home-made is short for "know-nothing no-skills hobbyist made"?

 

I call all my bags "Mimby". 

Mimby#53, Mimby#62 etc.

Only one person ever asked my where the name came from, I said "Made In My Back Yard".

[Tugadude]

5 hours ago, Constabulary said:

Definitions may differ in different countries but a term you often read in terms of small business made items in MANUFATUR. I know the translations may throw out different meaning. A MANUFAKTUR may differ in sizes (number of employees and so forth) depending on the branch but usually - nowadays - when you read MANUFAKTUR over here (like leather MANUFAKTUR, Glass MANUFAKTUR....) is most of the time is associated with a small business producing high quality goods in a rather small volume (again - depends on the definition) with a high amount of hand and / or art work.

Not sure if MANUFAKTUR has the same meaning worldwide and history for has changed the meaning but that pretty much the definition in the "old world" nowadays:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufaktur#Der_moderne_Begriff  (use googel translate)

We don´t have to look far - same with sewing machine like ARTISAN or COWBOY or THOR. No one in Europe (I guess) would call his sewing Machine Co. COWBOY - of course it´s a different story in the US. It gives you a certain association with something most folks (in the US) are familiar with - the original Co. name is HIGHTEX IIRC - so calling it COWBOY is a marketing name tailored to the US market. THOR and ARTISAN of course gives certain associations with something else. Thats marketing! Not meant as an offense to the brand names!

In the U.S. we use the term manufacturer, but it doesn't carry the connotation of a small company.  It really doesn't have any definition of size attached to it.

[Spyros]

I think producing leather items in general is very very much behind other industries in terms of automation.   I've seen products where someone stands behind a glass window, presses the start button and the next time a human hand touches the product is at some supermarket on the other side of the planet when they unwrap the pallets.  

Despite the sewing machines and skiving machines, leatherworking is still very much a manual process.

In my professional world, which is mainly manufacturing/industrial, when they say handmade they mean a product where the ratio of manual labour Vs machine/automation is heavily towards the former.

And every single leather item that I've seen how it's made meets this definition, in fact it's a prime example.

When a bag has 10 hours of pure manual labour in it with tools that are pretty much the same as a couple of centuries ago, you can't tell me it's not handmade because there was also 20 minutes of sewing machine somewhere in between, that's ridiculous.  Call it almost entirely handmade or something silly like that if you must.

The fact that some leatherworkers are in some sort of competition with each other who will consume the least electricity doesn't mean that the rest of the world also sees things the same way.

 

Edited June 11, 2021 by Spyros

[fredk]

40 minutes ago, Tugadude said:

In the U.S. we use the term manufacturer, but it doesn't carry the connotation of a small company.  It really doesn't have any definition of size attached to it.

Its not a word we think about here, but generally 'manufacturer' means a big company. eg BMW is a manufacturer, the truck building place near me which builds about 20 trucks a month is not

[Tugadude]

58 minutes ago, fredk said:

Its not a word we think about here, but generally 'manufacturer' means a big company. eg BMW is a manufacturer, the truck building place near me which builds about 20 trucks a month is not

Interesting.  That just goes to show that although we both speak English, the words can have vastly different meanings.

[fredk]

@Tugadude and that is why we must be careful what we write. An ordinary word to me/you might be honestly offensive to someone else. I was taken to task on another forum for calling people 'plebs'. I learnt that at school; its Latin (plebeian) for the common person, but to the English its an insult.

[fredk]

3 hours ago, Spyros said:

I call all my bags "Mimby". 

Mimby#53, Mimby#62 etc.

Only one person ever asked my where the name came from, I said "Made In My Back Yard".

teehee. that be funny 

mmmm, what might my code be? MIMA? Made In My Apartment? We call it a 'Flat' but MIMF doesn't work so good

[Spyros]

16 hours ago, fredk said:

teehee. that be funny 

mmmm, what might my code be? MIMA? Made In My Apartment? We call it a 'Flat' but MIMF doesn't work so good

Nothing good comes to mind, I keep thinking of MILF for some reason

[toxo]

A friend of mine used to import and sell various stuff from Thailand. I always said " It's marvellous what a Thailander? can make with a few sticks of wood" After reading some of this thread I thought back to Harley Davidsons they make out of a bunch of reeds.They ranged from 6 inches long to full size. Obviously they don't make the reeds or the occassional pins or the paint/lacquer but those bikes were made with a pair of hands and a knife. That's handmade. Every other definition is an individuals personal agenda and always will be.

[Frodo]

just a thought. 

The more I think about the origin of the word handmade  the more I think it was most likely do to the 

industrial revolution , things started being made in factories by machinery 

so it only makes sense to me that the term handmade would start to be used 

[Klara]

Very probably, as everything would have been handmade before then. Or possibly it might be a mid-20th century term, from when really cheap mass-produced crap started to floof the Planet. 

Anybody remember the (old) film of the musical "The Fiddler on the Roof"? There the village tailor can finally buy a sewing machine and jumps with joy: "Now my clothes will be machine-made, now they will be perfect!" 

 

 

[chuck123wapati]

2 hours ago, Frodo said:

just a thought. 

The more I think about the origin of the word handmade  the more I think it was most likely do to the 

industrial revolution , things started being made in factories by machinery 

so it only makes sense to me that the term handmade would start to be used 

dont ask me how they know lol.

https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/how-define-handmade-items/

Webster's Dictionary defines handmade as an item made by hand or by a hand process. It was first used in the early seventeenth century.