handmade

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We need the handmade to balance the mind-numbingly similar machine-made things around us, things that can only ever express the efficiency and speed with which they were produced. Craft makes our homes more human. We sense the time, care and skill that went into the making. Like life in its slow accumulation of experience, a crafted piece is an expression of the daily moods of the maker during its creation. It speaks of the concentration and love with which the object was made. It can be sensual, intricate, full of sentiment - and imperfect. It carries the imprint of the hands that made it. And just as we recognize our strong, almost physical attachment to objects crafted by others so we enjoy making things with our own hands more and more, after years when admitting that we practised domestic skills was like confessing a guilty secret. Now even knitting has moved from granny to the internet, and is flourishing as a contemporary creative pastime.Taking time to make something slows us down. It's a ritual, an antidote to the hurry of modern life, a process that cannot be forced beyond its natural pace.

Ilse Crawford

home is where the heart is ?




 


 


 




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