THE DIFFERENCE YOU CAN'T SEE BUT ALWAYS FEEL

Workshop days

There's a piece of silver in my recycling pot right now.

It was almost right. The form was there, the proportion was close, but something about the way it sat didn't feel right. So it went in the pot. It will be melted down and become something else.

A machine never does that. A machine doesn't feel the difference between almost right and exactly right. It just makes the next one.

That's the difference between handmade and mass produced. Not the obvious things. Not the price tag or the certificate of authenticity or the story on the website. The thing you can't photograph or measure or put in a product description.

The decision to start again.

What mass produced actually means

Mass produced jewellery is not bad jewellery. Let's be honest about that from the start. Some of it is beautiful. Some of it is well made within the constraints of the process that made it.

But the process has no instinct. It has tolerances and specifications and quality control checkpoints. It does not have the moment where a maker picks something up, turns it over in her hands and thinks no. Not this one.

That moment is what handmade means.

Not the romance of it. Not the Instagram story of the bench and the tools and the leather apron. The actual decision making that happens when a human being is responsible for every stage of making something and accountable for every result.

What happens at the bench

When I make a piece I make decisions at every stage that no specification document could anticipate.

The weight of the wire. The angle of the hammer. The moment the polish is exactly right. Whether the dome has been struck enough times or needs one more. Whether the wire sits across the surface with intention or just sits there.

These are not decisions that can be automated. They require a maker who has made enough pieces to know the difference between the ones that are right and the ones that aren't. Who has enough confidence in that judgement to put the ones that aren't into the recycling pot without hesitation.

Forty years of making gives you that confidence. It also fills up a lot of recycling pots.

The things you can feel but can't explain

People often say there's something different about a handmade piece but they struggle to say exactly what it is.

It's the weight. Not heavy or light in any absolute sense but right for what it is. Because the maker decided on that weight rather than a specification sheet.

It's the finish. The way the surface catches the light in a way that feels considered rather than uniform. Because it was considered. At every stage.

It's the way it sits. Against the skin, on the finger, at the collarbone. Because someone held it there in their imagination while they were making it and adjusted until it was right.

These things don't show up in a product description. They don't show up in a photograph. They show up when you put the piece on and something settles. When you reach for it the next morning without thinking about it. When you're still wearing it ten years later.

The honest truth about price

Handmade costs more. That's true and there's no point pretending otherwise.

It costs more because it takes longer. Because the maker is paid for her time and her forty years of judgement not just her materials. Because the pieces that go in the recycling pot are part of the cost of making the pieces that don't.

But the piece that goes in the recycling pot is also the reason the piece you're wearing is exactly right. You're not just buying the piece. You're buying every decision that was made to get it there. Including the decision to start again.

That's what handmade means.

Not the story. The standard.

Sue Dunmore, Porini Design Studio, Tararua District, New Zealand.