Aurora,

Why not just say creators? I understand you want recognition to all the work you put into your jewelry but both terms involve creation and each person has their own process of creating whether it’s taking classes learning how to be a metalsmith or how to use molds to make jewelry or taking classes on how to bead or use pliers to apply jump rings. If you want to make a clear distinction for yourself or to separate yourself from the rest of the competition, then you can simply tell your customers/consumers how you made your creation or if you have a website that you sell your goods on that is what the “About Us” section is for. There is room for everybody to display their talents and creations. Might I add, to you it may seem that stringing or beading may be a very easy task but it isn’t easy stringing beads, they fall all over the place etc. LOL Like another post said, you still have to use your vision for how you want your jewelry to look whether you’re using pre-made supplies or raw materials. It’s like the saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, so is creation.

Jane,

Your creations are your own regardless of how you created it. If it makes you happy and other happy when they see or purchase your creations then that is the only thing that matters. Everyone will have an opinion that differs from yours, you can’t let that discourage you from your accomplishments. There are some people who don’t even know how to string beads together and if everyone knew how to do it there wouldn’t be classes or different tools on how to do it. I hope you continue to make your creations.

To me, handmaking means someone actually makes the item from scratch/with raw material with their hands to create a final product and handcrafted means that someone put pre-made items together by hand to create a finished product but the items weren’t made from scratch. It seems there is no debate on both terms when it comes to whether or not the final product is created by using the hands. The argument seems to be predicated on the amount of skill used, the supplies or materials used and the entire process that came about in the creation of the product in it’s final stage. Both utilize skill and tools. Handmade uses more skill because you have to use complex tools, techniques and skills like knowing how to utilize a machine for soldering and what chemicals, etc. Handcrafting you may use tools such as different pliers to apply jump rings. On the surface however you can say that both terms/techniques utilize “pre-made/pre-fab materials furnished by machine”, one just utilizes materials where machines have more involvement of in the making of the supplies. For example, with handcrafted items the material would use pre-fab pendants or beads, etc. but you can also say that handmade items made with raw materials are also made in some way by pre-made materials b/c for example raw material like metal sheets or wood, etc. can be cut or made and sorted by machines in factories before it gets into the possession of the creator of the item or before creator purchases it. The distinction there however, is that one has minimal machine inclusion in the process and the other has more but in the end everyone gets their supplies to “create” the item from somewhere. Although in both labels/characterizations of handmade and handcrafted a machine is involved in some part of the process of obtaining the materials, the process of creating the final product itself does not include assembly or involvement by a machine or mass production by a machine.

When I think of “crafts”, I tend to think of things people have made when they were in school like taking construction paper and making a snowflake. You are using something that was pre-made (construction paper) but you are using your vision to create something new out of it. Handmade makes me think of the term “homemade” when your Grandmother would take raw ingredients and make cookies or a cake instead of using ingredients from a box. This is how I make my distinction. I guess this will forever be a debate like using the words potato or potato. It differs from each creator based on their beliefs of what best defines how their jewelry was created. Regardless on what label/term you use to describe your jewelry, I think both are more beneficial and intimate than buying a mass produced piece of jewelry that is created by machine from beginning to end. Both processes involve focus, imagination and vision (although they subject to varying degrees). They both can also produce exclusive designs that mass amounts of people won’t have access to. The most important thing is that you are truthful with the consumers you are selling to so they know how your beautiful creation came to be.

Jean, thanks so much for adding your experiences and insights to this conversation!

I’m sorry this discussion became negative/discouraging for you. That wasn’t my/our intention.

But, in the world of running a business, if you want to avoid later legal issues, it is good to know the legal definition of hand made. While you may be stringing, you are still as an artist choosing the color palette, deciding on the bead shapes, whether to use metal, glass, paper, clay or other media. If the end result is attractive and someone wants to buy it from you, then there’s reason for joy.

What this discussion (I think) highlights most is what happens when you begin to reach out to a much broader market. How you label your product is important. I have no doubt you would be offended if you purchased an item you thought to be unique and hand made only to later find it was mass produced and hundreds of thousands of items identical to yours are being sold for one 10th the price you paid.

The thing is we all (as customers) want truth in advertising. And as business owners we owe it to our clients to give them truth. Our own personal thoughts of what constitutes hand made doesn’t cut it in the business world. I would call most bead stringers and bead weavers, Assemblage Artists and Designers. Don’t let yourself get hung up on the words “hand made” as if that is the pinnacle of all things good.

It wasn’t all that long ago after the start of the industrial revolution that hand-made was a pejorative term. For a long time, the pinnacle of quality and keeping up with the Jones meant buying the newest factory made item, from cars to kitchen appliances. Even machine made hosiery was held to be far better than hand knit stockings.

Now in our age when so much is factory produced and hand crafted items are more rare, calling it hand made gives it a cache it wouldn’t have had in the 1950’s and 60’s.
Lady M

Don’t let us rain on your parade; bring out your beads and baubles and enjoy yourself creating lots of fun stuff for your customers.

articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_4789.shtml

Full version on the government web site found here:

CFR 23.3 – Misuse of the terms “hand-made,” “hand …
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/CFR…/CFR-2010-title16-vol1-sec23-3
50+ items – … 23.3 – Misuse of the terms “hand-made,” “hand-polished,” etc.
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I agree with several of you about design and originality. I’ve met some people who do “just bead stringing” and make BEAUTIFUL designs. All their materials are pre-fabricated. But it’s the artistic nature of the design that makes it “handmade”.

While I understand percentages for craft shows, I don’t like applying that to “real life”. Most of us don’t exist solely within the craft show realm. I think it’s unfair to judge everyone by such a strict standard. That was the point of this question, really. To both view everyone’s opinions, and broaden our own.

So here’s another question, inspired by Lady M. Do you take your customer’s views into account when labeling your jewelry? My customers have said I am an “artists”, “craft-er” and “hand make” my art. Personally, if my customers and I agree on the description, I don’t see a reason to change it! ^.^

I spent almost all of my life as a keyboard musician and vocalist. I got benched when an unfortunate fall screwed up my left hand and left me without a vocation.
However, as a musician, I was all of composer, arranger, director, producer and performer…usually not all at the same time!
I have had the honor of knowing some very gifted composers in my day. Usually, their instrument of choice was a keyboard, but I’ve known guitarists and even harpists who were good musical creators.
These “composers” created beautiful, original work, but none of them went out and sawed down their own trees, killed their own elephants (for the ivory) or fabricated their own metal for the pedals, killed their own animals and gutted them for their own guitar strings, or (gasp!) even “created” their own manuscript paper on which these beautiful compositions were written.

Yet, to call them musical “assemblers” or song “crafters” would be laughable! None of these people created their own raw material on which they created their musical tapestries, and yet ALL of them carry the honored title of “composer.”

I would just encourage us all not to get lost in the forest of minutae, and celebrate the love of the creative process…no matter what form it takes.

By the way, if you click on my link, you will find that I had to put my passion aside…temporarily…to build a business to make a living. Hopefully, I can be reunited with my creativity soon.

From that perspective, a lot of us here do assembly rather than pure hand crafting. Even bead weaving, while certainly put together by hand, is still using beading threads that are manufactured, and beads glass or otherwise that are ready to use. Assembly can be done very creatively, and with huge variations in quality of finished pieces. For example bead embroidery, when the artist is designing the entire layout from inside the mind. The design is certainly original, but the materials are not. Potters, start with raw clay. Bead makers start with glass in rods or powders or with polymer clay, or with paper, and turn those mediums into something not remotely resembling the original source material. And all of this should come into play when defining things for the ” High Art ” show circuit.

But for me personally, the lines are a lot more flexible. Assembly means something more along the lines of purchasing a bunch of ready made components, like a pendant from one source, chain from another, and findings from another and then putting those together in visually interesting ways. The main portion of labor is in researching, sourcing, and ordering the supplies.

Folks who knit, for example, unless they card and then spin the fibre from the animal before knitting wouldn’t qualify under the 80%/20% rule. But their work is definitely much more labor intensive than matching a pendant to a chain and adding components.

In truth, my wire sculpted pieces have to be considered assemblage, because I don’t do metal fabrication and draw my own wire from an ingot. I still say that my pieces are hand crafted, because outside of this community most customers won’t understand the nuances of the different definitions. And my work tends to require a good deal of hand manipulation of the wire.

In Autumn’s work. She takes existing vintage components and adds on her own styling in wire and beads. For those of us integral to the community we’d call it upcycling assemblage art. For the consumer, hand crafted works just fine!

Lady M

I tend to think the term you choose to describe the jewelry you make is a personal choice. If you use your hands in the process of making it – I think you could use handcrafted, handmade, hand finished, or other possible descriptive words.

In reading the article – What Does Hand Made or Handcrafted Really Mean by: Lou Radecki, he says; “At this stage, with all the variables possible, all the terms “handmade”, “handcrafted” “handicraft” and “hand finished” can possibly mean is that some part of the process has the mark of an individual human being. And that the final item cannot be exactly duplicated, and is therefore, one-of-a-kind. But the line is drunken blurry, and subject to individual interpretation”.

Of course, this subject is debatable. But, bottom line is – use what is right and comfortable for you.

As for me, I use Handcrafted to describe the Jewelry that I create.

BTW – the article I referenced is at:
articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_4789.shtml
if you’re interested in reading more on his take on the history & evolution of these descriptive words.

Best wishes in your endeavors!

I have a press and make back plates and stamp other material out of metal, that’s handmade. Buying prefabricated stamped out items from someone else is not handmade by you.

To me there’s no fine line. For example, the key design is assembled because it doesn’t meet the percentage by weight.