Etsy: 21st Century Arts and Crafts

Is Etsy fostering a new Arts and Crafts movement on the Internet? It would seem so. With the saggy economy, I read recently on Huffington Post, that more and more unemployed people are turning to making and selling handmade crafts to add a little pocket change to those unemployment checks.  A few of these new craftspeople are actually making a living selling their wares through Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade things. 

 Felt iphone case, latelierdeluluu, 
Available on Etsy 

Etsy's Mission and Vision: Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers. Our vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice:  buy, sell and live handmade.

Etsy Headquarters: 9,000 square feet of space with 75 employees 

Etsy HQ is the buzzing hub of a growing internet based, 

global arts and crafts movement.

Tina Roth Eisenberg of the design blog, Swiss Miss, in NYC lives in the neighborhood of Etsy headquarters. She dropped in for a visit and then wrote, "Not only do they have a full time chef (!), they also bought all their furniture and decoration off Etsy. What struck me is that their office is 100% true to their brand. The office maintains the handmade feel of the products they carry. Impressive." 

 "Did you see those giant orange lamps? And the curtains?" 

Tina Roth Eisenberg/Swiss Miss

(lower 2 images from: Apartment Therapy)

The Beauty of Craft

 Paul West at Her Studio
 

I visited Paula West's Pottery studio last week to write a pre-Artstock profile for the blog San Juan Update.  In it I wrote, "I asked her what inspires her. She talked about the beauty of everyday objects and the inspiration she gets from folk arts, quilts, her garden, and tribal crafts." Paula also asked me if I knew about The Unknown Craftsman. I didn't, but I've been reading up on it since. The Unknown Craftsman refers to an aesthetic philosophy based on the work of Soetsu Yanagi. Yanagi wrote The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty and was the founder of the Japanese Folkart Movement in the 1920s. The "Unknown Craftsman" is the folk artist who created functional objects that were never signed. Yanagi rescued pots made by unknown potters of the Edo and Meiji periods. The earlier anonymous works were vanishing  in the wake of new industrially produced goods.

It has been suggested that the Japanese Folkart Movement may have been influenced by the British Arts and Crafts Movement started by artist and writer William Morris. Whether or not that is the case they were parallel movements that recognized what was being lost as their respective cultures plunged into industrialized modernity. Both movements sought to retain and protect traditions of handmade crafts. Just as they were seeing their culture's craft traditions disappear they sought to elevate and promote them. They valued truthful use of materials, exalted the process of craftsmanship and revered the beauty of craft.

 Ceramic Cup, Paula West