craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

Appropriately-compensated?

y'know, a living wage

can this conversation be had by americans

I understand the desire for a living wage or even just better wages but I am wary of second-guessing those labor markets. Would it be better to entirely forego products from some place because they don't pay wages I think fair and thus potentially deprive those workers of any wage at all or reduce the very advantage that they have in the global market?

Mind you, I'm not against socially ameliorative purchasing strategies, I'm just wary that 'fair trade' too might be a form of cynical marketing.

pfft the only product that doesn't involve cynical marketing is probably something made by someone you know and given to you for free, ie a homemade gift

"artisanal" is a word that's come back into fashion recently, but it's been in english usage for centuries: it was a distinction the arts and crafts movement popularised in the 19th century, to register approval of maker-knowledge they feared was vanishing, with the mass move to cities and the growth of factories and the machine-made; they wanted to differentiate skilled handwork from the unskilled work that (many) machines fostered. It probably comes from artigiano, but another possible source is artitianus (via artitus, past participle of artire, meaning to instruct in the arts)

(second derivation being key, since it's about a skill being passed on rather than lost)

alright, but handwork has nearly always been associated with luxury in some products -- i'm thinking specifically of textiles, esp. handworked lace and embroidery -- because of the sheer amount of labor required to make them and make them well, and they are very easily distinguished from their machine-made equivalents. but that labor is also acknowledged to be tedious and even (literally) punishing.

a product made with attention to detail implies the wealth of the owner, and always has -- not just wealth, but class distinction and all the heightened discriminations that go along with it. you do not buy it because of its details, you buy them to demonstrate that you are the type of person who appreciates those details.

elmo otm

elmo otm. they're a more significant iteration of the impulse that lead a lot of us to hang band posters in our dorm rooms

it seems to me your primary complaint is with marketing language and the associated inability of people to make informed decisions based upon it

It's more an argument with willfully deceptive (and often self-deceptive) self-definition. I can go out tomorrow and hang a shingle over a blanket in Harvard Square and sell tiles I've pornographically Sharpied and call myself a wandering artist in the tradition of Basquiet. I can even believe in my art, and maybe have some real raw talent for it. Maybe I'll get rich from it. Who knows? But the fact is that I'm not a wandering artist in the same way as somebody who's spent twenty years at his trade, or in the same way I'll be in twenty years. It doesn't necessarily mean that I'm not an artist, or that my art is invalid or inauthentic. But if I set my prices at an ego-gratifying $500/tile, when there are tiles that are roughly as pornographic for $12, two blankets away I'm basically acting in an entitled, delusional and borderline-dishonest way. And even moreso if I induce customers to spend an extra $488 under the justification that there's some moral superiority to purchasing from me.

[I get that this is an unpopular opinion here, and I'm also sure this is why I'm always gonna be poor, but I don't think it has as much to do with marketing as the impulse behind the desire to market in a certain way.]

Artizan (manual laborer) is attested in French from the mid-16th Century, mark.

I still don't buy that completely, I think it's also about (maybe unconsciously) trying to forge connections in an anonymous economic culture, a desire to know something about who's producing your material goods. Even if you haven't met face to face, buying a print from a hipster on Etsy is more of a personal link than getting a poster from Ikea.

And even moreso if I induce customers to spend an extra $488 under the justification that there's some moral superiority to purchasing from me.

Caveat emptor and all that. There's a sucker born every minute.

Also, 'roughly as pornographic' is a felicitious turn of phrase

that was a xxp about handmade as luxury

M White OTM

thing is, this specific fashion-shift, by a sector of the educated middle-class, towards approval of (and patronage of) the hand-made, for a mix of reasons (actual politics, pseudo-politics, genuine interest and connoisseurship and knowledge, moral swank, blunt wealthy-person showing-off...) has happened several times in the last 150-odd years, ever since morris and ruskin: awareness of it falls in and out of art history -- it's obviously on a big upswing at the moment (others were the 70s, the 20s and the 1880s), but all the exact same issues swirl around

$500 vs $12 and ignoring all the ethical dimensions in favor of 'artisanal' that have been brought up is some wicked strawmanning

But if I set my prices at an ego-gratifying $500/tile,

if people are going to pay this, then it is the smart thing to charge this much. ego doesn't have much to do with it, beyond maybe feeling smug about ripping off people. which is the sort of behavior/mindset encouraged by capitalism.

xp

idk i'm just spitballing here but i'm highly skeptical of the ethical dimensions in favor of "artisanal" esp. as some kind of blanket concept

My real point, Remy, is that dude selling $500.00 porno tiles a blanket down from $12.00 ones had better have some massively compelling moral-superiority marketing and even then he's probably going to outright fail or at least end up making less money.

Artisanal, to me, is useful when it indicates something tastier or rarer or more aesthetically pleasing somehow. If you're artisinal gougeres are no better than the Taylorized bakery across the Bay and the ingredients are the same, why should I pay twice as much? Otoh, if they rock, here's my money.

you're? Sheesh...

Whenever I see something offered through Groupon, I think the company's story is: We priced it wrong the first time.

I'm noticing that a lot of businesses that aren't putting their good on sale are instead investing in telling the story behind why their products/services are priced the way they are.

Last Spring, Hermes had a bunch of their craftpeople set up at pop-up shops in a few different cities, simply doing their job at a workstation set up for public viewing -- so the tie-maker made ties, the scarf-maker dyed scarves, etc.

Today, for something kind of work-related, I ended up at a store that sells $40,000 mattresses. And you bet that those mattresses have a story about all of the details and pedigree that justify the value of the thing.

I'm sure it came via French, Michael, which you know ten million times better than me anyway -- most of the Latin element in English did. But (acc. the concise oxford, which is all I have to hand, and it doesn't do dates, or give the specific French) the deep root is as I wrote, the Italian from the late Latin, which had the sense of a skill taught or passed on...

http://www.marissamarchant.com/

How to attract people to buy without putting stuff on sale

Marchant comes from ye olde Norman for "walking artisanal merchant"

Last Spring, Hermes had a bunch of their craftpeople set up at pop-up shops in a few different cities, simply doing their job at a workstation set up for public viewing -- so the tie-maker made ties, the scarf-maker dyed scarves, etc.

lol a lot of the raw materials for this stuff still comes from china

milo, i don't disagree that other factors and motivations come into play -- i think, too, that there has been some slippage when it comes to what 'handcrafting' means in terms of marketing -- it can mean 'made with exacting attention to detail by an experienced, dedicated laborer' or it can mean 'a unique labor of love, charming imperfections & idiosyncrasies included' depending on what's being sold & by whom

Related to that, I saw an ad somewhere (some special watch issue of something like the Financial Times) from a watch-related industry group that compared and contrasted buying an authentic watch made by a craftsman versus buying a fake watch made in a sweatshop.

I guess I'm only interested in artisanal handmade stuff insofar as those qualities are usually correlated with 'quality' and 'longlasting' - pretty sure my uniqlo selvedge was made by machine but who cares they've been pretty durable. and my red wings are nice but if you told me a machine made them, well eh, they're still well made.

one take on our annoying future

http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/03/07/200135/the-yoga-instructor-economy/

― goole, Thursday, November 3, 2011 6:07 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Or the annoying present of New York City!

hand-sewn ties vs. machine-sewn ties is a great example of a false distinction in 'quality' imho

elmo I asked you a question on your tie thread. btw love the tie/shirt combo you posted today

so is there an... economic(? or political?) objection to "the new craftsmanship"? so far it seems like the big objections are largely cultural in nature--i.e. abt the motives of the new craftsmen-and-women and the ppl who consume products of the new craft

It was pretty neat to watch in person.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6209/6116352747_ae0f51fda5.jpg

"a fake watch made in a sweatshop" <-- hands don't move separately?

i think the main objection in terms of the politics of economics is that it's never going to be anything but a boutique market, so it's a red herring in respect of (for example) tackling unemployment on a significant scale

okay but there's not a economic-political objection to its existences, just to its reach

insofar as most of us probably think ppl should be able to produce, sell, and buy what they want then no

lol a lot of the raw materials for this stuff still comes from china

silk from the Orient? curse this modern age

haha. I know somebody who used to work at LV, she said pretty much all of the materials - the leather, gold zippers and clasps, chains, etc. are made in china and shipped to italy/france to be assembled.

this is gonna turn into another quiddities of the ruling class-stylee thread, isn't it?!?

insofar as most of us probably think ppl should be able to produce, sell, and buy what they want then no

― call all destroyer, Thursday, November 3, 2011 7:18 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha. u sure that "most of us" do?

Dayo, that's probably part of why Hermes (competing against LV) was bringing in their folks to do this demonstration. They all work in the same place:

haha. u sure that "most of us" do?

― max, Thursday, November 3, 2011 7:24 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that seems to be an assumption most ppl itt are operating under!

the cultural objection to this stuff is, i think, some kind of instinctual reaction to its ancientness. if working this way (and buying this way) is a reaction to capitalism or industrialization, it "feels" less like a way forward than a reach back even further to aristocratic patronage of craftspeople.

so, rather than stamping out parts for something that everyone buys (to the great profit of a few), you're handmaking some object that the greatly-profited few are buying directly.

this all sounds pretty marxy i guess.

nah, you don't say

well i don't really share the objection, but that's my expert diagnosis of it *straightens bow tie*