When did "I made it" become "it's handmade"?

Somewhere along the way, "I made it" became "it's handmade."

The longer I've spent making, the more I've realised that perhaps we don't all mean the same thing when we use the word, handmade.

A bowl can be thrown on a wheel by a potter, a candle can be poured by hand, an artist may spend months creating an original digital artwork before it is ever produced. Others may begin with licensed artwork, clip art or downloaded files before bringing an object into the world with the help of a machine.

None of these objects arrive in the world in quite the same way, yet we often describe them using the same word: handmade.

I don't think there was one particular moment when I began thinking about it, it's a collection of obversations gathered over time.   

Standing behind my own market table. Helping out with a local market.  Talking to a business about making candles for them.   Each time I'd come away with the same feeling but I couldn't quite put it into words.

Then one day I realised we were describing different parts of the same object.  They saw the candle, I saw everything that happens before it came to be one.   It was the first time I really had to explain my process and then I realised that we were not talking about the same thing.

That conversation stayed with me, not because I wanted to defend handmade, but because it made me wonder what the word was really trying to describe.

Was it describing the object? Or was it describing the journey?

The more I've thought about it, the more I've come to believe that many people genuinely think their work is handmade. Not because they are trying to mislead anyone, but because in their minds, they have made it.

They've learnt software, chosen materials, prepared files, operated machines, assembled, packed and sent their work out into the world. Their involvement in the process is quite real.  But perhaps that is where our language begins to blur.

Some of us think it's about our involvement in making the object. 

Others think it's about the journey the object itself has taken.  Those are not always the same.

I've often wondered whether part of the problem is that many creatives simply haven't been given the words to explain their own process. They know instinctively that what they do is different.   Yet when someone asks them why, they find themselves reaching for words that never quite seem to fit.

Perhaps our language simply hasn't kept pace with the many ways things are now made.

This isn't an attempt to decide who is or isn't a maker. Every creative process deserves respect. I'm simply wondering whether we could become more descriptive.

Each process tells its own story. Perhaps our words should simply help us see it more clearly.  When we understand how something came into the world, we begin to understand its value.

If we we stop describing how things are made, we quietly stop seeing how they were made.

Every candle at Beckah is hand-poured in small batches from 100% New Zealand beeswax. If you're curious about my own making process, you'll find it reflected in the Everyday Pillar.