Despite the on/off rain(typical UK weather) we went straight to The Handmade Fair to get all artsy and crafty and support out fellow crafters! It was great to see lots of people with the same interest as me!
Amongst the crowds of the excitable community, we saw lots of little hobbies that reminded me of what i was always drawn to as a little me; things that allowed me to use my imagination to make something with my own hands!
Here’s something I made when i was 6 years of age and another at 10, which is still framed and placed on the very same wall at my family home.
Handmade items are growing and it’s great to see like-minded people. I’ve always valued great craftsmenship. There’s a book called ‘The Craftsmen’ i’ve read before, where by the sociologist Richard Sennett makes a case for homo faber (or “man as maker”). Harking back to the workshops of the medieval guilds and to the studio of violin-maker Antonio Stradivari, Sennett set out to prove Immanuel Kant’s dictum that “the hand is the window on to the mind”. It is only through making things, he says – by trying and failing and repeating – that we gain true understanding. He is not, like some latter-day John Ruskin, arguing that handmade things are better than machine-made ones. He is simply saying that skilled manual labour – or indeed any craft – is one path to a fulfilling life!
Jewellery featured in this article is from the Geometrix Collection:
Dalton Earring in Red
Drop Coin Ring
