Changes are afoot! But change is a good thing, right?! Sometimes...
I launched my website,
Hieropice.com,
in November. It was an exciting venture, to create a website that was
truly my own, that I could design, tweak, make. It is a venue
accessible to anyone, whether they're familiar with Etsy, or Hieropice,
or not. I can include features there that I can't on Etsy, like images
from
Polyvore,
where users have styled ensembles with Hieropice pieces, as well as my
local craft-show itinerary, links to my blog, and a gallery of custom
pieces I've made in the past. I get to control the look and feel of the
site, and make it match my brand.
While making Hieropice items
available to customers from a variety of venues is good business sense,
it wasn't my sole motivation for opening Hieropice.com. At the
beginning of November, handmade, vintage, and supply site Etsy, which
had been Hieropice's primary online home, made some changes to the
site's policies which were...difficult for me, as a handmade jewelry
artist.
Shortly before my older brother passed away recently, he
asked me, "what's the big deal about handmade anyway? I don't get what
could possibly be better about something someone's making with their
hands versus a machine."
I get his inquiry. Machine-made things
are not only great, but they're sometimes essential. I expect my car to
be machine-made, my electronics, my appliances. I know these items
often have elements of human assembly, but I feel comfortable with the
fact that a machine manufactures them primarily, making each one
identical to the next, precise, solid, consistent.
But for things
that I connect with in an intimate way, handmade matters. When I go out
to eat at a restaurant, I think about what I'm consuming, where things
were grown, even what the creatures I'm consuming consumed when they
were alive! I think about how a dish was prepared, how the surface it
was prepared on was prepared, what herbs, spices, fats, proteins and
vegetables went into it, the manner in which it was cooked. Most of us
have thought more about these things as our knowledge of the effects of
food on our bodies and our environment has grown. We care where our
food comes from, and what's in it, as we care about what it does to us,
to those around us, and our environment. And we appreciate being able
to ask the people who grew it, prepared it, cooked it, served it,
questions about it. And knowing that someone is accountable for it.
Handmade, in whatever form it may take, is valuable for these reasons.
When I create a handmade piece, you can ask me anything under the sun
about it. What is this made of? Where does the material come from?
What's the history of this technique? And I can tell you. (And if I
don't know off-hand, I'll certainly do my research!) I'm accountable
for what I make, so, it matters to me what it's made of, where the
materials come from and if they were acquired responsibly, whether the
piece stands the test of time, whether a buyer is happy with it. A
machine simply doesn't have an opinion about any of those things, and
when it's pumping out thousands of one thing at a time with a focus on
speed and quantity, it becomes difficult to even determine where issues
may arise, where flaws may be, and who's accountable for them.
For
example, there are materials often used in jewelry, like coral and
diamonds, that have controversial histories. Some diamonds originate in
areas where violence and exploitation play a major part in their
acquisition, and some coral is harvested with methods that destroy
environmentally-critical coral reefs. For me, as a handmade-maker who
is accountable, I could never be comfortable with selling pieces that
include materials with those origins. Because I value my work, and am
focused on its quality versus the monetary gains it might provide, and I
know that my customers would also expect me to make my pieces
responsibly, I try to ensure that my work reflects my values. And if,
at any point, I discover a material I'm using has origins I cannot
support, I have an obligation to discontinue using it. Like most
handmade artisans, I am a singular, accessible artist. There's no
corporation for me to hide behind with an endless labyrinth of
communication barriers, no machinery that must be re-designed or
dismantled in the event of a production concern, no "bottom line" I'd
have to consider before removing a questionable material from my work.
There's just me!
A handmade-maker offers a potential customer the
ability to collaborate, though they may not be an artist themself, and
have a concept they've only imagined realized. Buying handmade allows
you to customize a piece, and have something unique and one-of-a-kind
created. I like knowing the handmade piece I own is the only one in
existence. Or the piece I've designed for a loved one was created with
them; their specific preferences, wants and needs, in-mind. Some of the
most fun and creative pieces I've made have been custom requests, like
the miniature terrarium necklace I created for a woman to give to her
sister, who loves pigs and grew up raising them on the family farm. The
manufactured items in my home are useful, no-doubt, but I'm pretty sure
a million other people have the same laptop and bookshelf I do...
Handmade items have a "special-ness" that mass-produced items just
don't.
When a person receives a handmade piece, they get something
that someone has connected with, labored over, that contains the
artists' imagination and vision, the benefit of their years of study and
practice, their skill, their unique method. You know how groups of
people go to those trendy painting parties, and they all try to copy a
known painting, and every participant's painting comes out looking
totally different at the end of the evening? Every artist creates
differently, and interprets differently, and infuses their distinct
perspective into what they create. While other artisans can imitate
pieces that I create, I try very hard to ensure that my pieces are truly
my own, and that only I could create them, the way I do, as they are.
And there's always a story behind a handmade piece, which in itself,
has value. I have always loved nature, and when I learned how to make
full-size terrariums; natural environments encased in glass with soil
and charcoal and plants and moss, I was SO excited to share them with
people. But while friends, family, and customers appreciated the beauty
of those terraria, they expressed fear that they'd be unable to keep
the plants lush and green and alive! So I came up with a concept that
would allow fellow nature-lovers to keep an encapsulated natural
environment with them, without the maintenance. And building the
miniature terraria allowed me to imagine more and more tiny
environments, some that I'd never be able to capture in nature, like the
Winter White Terrarium Necklace 
And so my obsession continues! With a handmade piece you get a story,
about what inspired it, why the artist made it, how they made it, and
their vision for its use. You get a tale to recount to friends and
family when they ask "where'd you get your necklace?" And there's a
certain measure of pride when you can say, "a local artist made it,
because..." I'm not sure if my tea kettle has an interesting story
behind it, but I certainly can't ask the machine that made it!
So,
that's why handmade is great! I wish I had answered my brother this way
when he asked. But it was difficult to articulate. And all of those
things, the accountability, the customization, the uniqueness, the
artistic vision, the story, have been a part of buying on Etsy, the
biggest online handmade marketplace in existence. But, their policy, as
of November 1st, 2013, now reads "Etsy's new policies allow you to
partner with manufacturers to produce your designs. A manufacturer is
any outside business that helps make your items. For example, you can
work with a foundry that casts jewelry you've designed, a studio that
fires pottery you've thrown, or a factory that cuts and sews clothing
you've created. Handmade items must begin with the imagination and
creativity of the member operating the Etsy shop. Sellers can use the
help of other shop members, or outside manufacturers, to bring their
visions to life."
Hmm. Reading that gave me pause. Etsy
administrators held a "town hall" where they explained how this new
version of Etsy would function, with sellers now able to send designs
overseas to be manufactured, to have items shipped from other locations
directly to their customers. For some of my Etsy friends, this means
wonderful things, like they can now sell books featuring their original
illustrations on Etsy. But the policy change also means that a person's
hands don't actually need to participate in the creation of the items
they sell on Etsy. Items can be manufactured by machines, and by their
essence, not handmade. The shop owner has to participate in the
creative process of their items, but there's no definition of that
participation. For some, that could be simply choosing the color chair
or dress they want made out of a manufacturer's catalog. And when the
items I make contain all of the tenets of handmade I described above,
and are in a "handmade" marketplace alongside items that are being
pumped out by a factory, it troubles me. I know that major designers do
this typically; Karl Lagerfeld and Diane Von Furstenburg don't sew a
single stitch on the garments that bear their names. And it has
honestly always bothered me! It seems to be the mark of becoming
majorly successful as an artist, to become increasingly disconnected
from your work. At the same time, major designers aren't selling their
items in a "handmade marketplace," nor claiming they hand-make them
themselves. Etsy has made its name as the preeminent handmade
marketplace. But when items are losing multiple essential elements of
handmade; the hand-labor, the uniqueness, the story, the accountability,
etc., they no longer meet my expectations of handmade. So, while I'm
keeping
Hieropice on Etsy open, I've created
Hieropice.com
to honor true handmade, and all that that entails. Etsy is a fine
marketplace, that still contains a great deal of truly handmade items,
and still deserves your patronage. There are many dedicated artists who
sell on Etsy, including me! But Hieropice.com will be a handmade venue
exclusively featuring my work, and I hope that you'll support it (and
true handmade), as well!
Love, Dara
