Value and Significance

I’ve always thought that hard work has value, and making things by hand has significance. Even though this is obviously romantic and foolish and not in line with our modern culture, I still feel like it’s true.

There is excitement and novelty about new things and we’re always told the more current they are-the more exciting. There is affordability (and sometimes cheapness) is mass produced objects that makes them widely available.
But there is a uniqueness, an expression of personal vision and energy, and evidence of accumulated skill and care in objects made by hand.

I’m pretty sure I got these ideas from my parents. They never talked about any of this when I was growing up but looking back, it was always there. For example, we had a huge vegetable garden and grew and processed a lot of our own food. We all had to help with this and mostly we liked it. The garden was always talked about around my home with pride, as an accomplishment, and the food produced was always delicious! I don’t think my parents consciously chose hard work as an ideology, it was just ingrained in them by their parents in earlier times. However it happened, these ideals are now ingrained in me and to a large extent they’re why I’ve chosen to make ceramics. I love working hard and making objects with my hands that will connect me to others who value this same thing.

While we can not live in our modern world with only beautiful and special hand-made objects in our lives, we can value the ones we have and tune into that feeling of pride in craftsmanship. We can remember the skill, time and effort that went into them and feel the care and connection with the person who made it. The objects in our lives have meaning and history and what we choose to surround ourselves with effects us, for better or worse. I want to choose more significance, care, value and beauty!