craftsmen/artisans vs Cheap goods

[Riverkilt]

Sorry, there are so many definitions of "value" I should have clarified.

I mean value in the sense of the service/usefulness obtained for the money paid.

An oak chair, like a hand sewn kilt, can last for generations if cared for. Regardless of the money paid, the quality is there and that quality which enables a product to be useful for generations is what provides the value I speak of.

Yes, you may pay more upfront for a quality oak chair or a hand sewn kilt, but over the years you will get more than your money's worth compared with less expensive options.

Your mileage may differ with other definitions of value.

Ron

[DWFII]

I stand by my statements. There are plenty of fishers, hunters, bakers, ranchers, farmers, and craftworkers in this country.

Yes, of course there are. Maybe I'm just showing my age, but there are far, far less of them today than there were last year...or ten years ago...or when I was a boy. And if we look at the history of this country...as malleable as some would like history to be...there isn't a fraction of the "fishers, hunters, bakers, ranchers, farmers, and craftworkers" in and among the general population as there was 100 years ago.

And the trend is downward. Ever downward. Never once has it reversed itself.

When I think of the millions of people living in and around New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, etc., and the way our population has, since the beginning of the 20th century, steadily and irrevocably moved off the land and concentrated itself in urban warrens, I might have to re-think my 10% estimate. That may be too high.

[DWFII]

Sorry, there are so many definitions of "value" I should have clarified.

I mean value in the sense of the service/usefulness obtained for the money paid....

Ron

No worries...I couldn't agree more.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

My wife can knit. My wife can bake her own bread. Most of the other young mothers her age that she knows can't do either and think that she is amazing because she can do things like that.

She can also sew, which is another skill that most others that would be considered her peers cannot do.

I hand sew (she can sew circles around me on the machine). People often go google eyed when they discover that me -- a man -- can sew!

Anyway, my point here is that these are pretty basic skills that you could generally expect someone in any given household to know how to do, not that long ago. These days, however, most of the people we know in our age group (30's) are doing good to even cook their own dinner and eat together at the dining room table. Most of them eat out or order in more often than they make their own meals. Not all of them, mind you. But a good number.

Baking bread, hand knitting, crocheting, and even being able to sew on button on a shirt are all very basic skills that most people my generation are sadly lacking.

The good news, though, is that I am also meeting more and more people my age and younger who are making a purposeful effort to learn these kinds of hand crafts and not let these old skills die. I work with college students part time, and many of them are very much interested in learning to bake, learning to sew, learning to knit, learning to quilt, learning to do for themselves. I think that's a good sign.

But, for now, the majority of people I meet don't have these skills, and are very much engrossed in a consumer mentality.

[Donnie]

ted,

i think you are finding insult where none was or is intended. It was just an essay...one that i have thought about for many years. One that, may i suggest, i am very well positioned to address. If you re-read the post...and re-read it with all that in mind...you will see that it aimed at no one and covers everyone--including myself.

That said, i stand by what i wrote--i don't know too many folks in this part of the country...nor any part of the country...who have killed their own dinner at least once in their lives--just to know what the true cost of it is, mind you. And at 63 years old, i haven't known all that many in my entire life who have done...despite having spent most of my life around ranch and rural people (although i will grant you that it is far more common in such communities). Take a guess at what percentage of the population in this country, however, can make such a claim...i suspect it isn't over 10%.

Do you make your own bread every week? Some do, but most don't. Not where i live, not anywhere i've ever lived.

As for the rest, i know from reading posts here that many people talk quality and buy expedient. Again, myself included. I've got an old harris tweed sport coat that i've got half torn apart trying to convert to a highland jacket. But it will never be a proper highland jacket. And i know it...i know it because for over 35 years i've made the better part of my living working with my hands...making shoes--a 19th century trade that exists at the margins and mercy of the greater society, subsisting on what can objectively be called 19th century wages.

In the 19th century a pair of quality shoes may have cost...say, $100.00. But it was the equivalent of $1000.00 in today's wages. Most people today, still want to pay $100.00 for a pair of shoes and balk at anything more. Even if i weren't a shoemaker, i'd still be insulted by that attitude, but especially when confronted with talk of how good a pair of allen edmonds are. Or to keep us on topic, how good a $100.00 kilt is.

And if we, as individuals, spend the better part of our lives and life energy looking for ways to avoid buying quality...looking for substitutions and short cuts, endlessly, endlessly...our society will end up with no one who knows how to do anything but make plastic flip-flops. We're very near that point now.

So i guess we have to take our insults where we can find them. As a shoemaker, i feel eminently qualified to suggest that if the shoe fits, wear it.

right on!

[DWFII]

The good news, though, is that I am also meeting more and more people my age and younger who are making a purposeful effort to learn these kinds of hand crafts and not let these old skills die. I work with college students part time, and many of them are very much interested in learning to bake, learning to sew, learning to knit, learning to quilt, learning to do for themselves. I think that's a good sign.

Matt,

I think so too...or I did.

My wife bakes bread once a week...two loaves generally last us that long...spins, knits, and works in the bootshop. She's also involved with several spinners and weavers groups and they try to pass on "lost" knowledge. We have raised chickens, geese, hogs, and goats...collecting eggs, surgically caponizing pullets, milking, and butchering. Gardening, canning and preserving.

I have spent the last 35+ years of my life not just making boots but fostering students, answering questions and trying the best I knew how to encourage interest in what was/is considered nearly a lost art (at least in this country). I teach bootmaking seminars and have written several books about bootmaking. I also run a discussion forum dedicated to bespoke boot and shoemaking which I created. We have a student coming from Brussels next week...one of three or four international students in the last year alone. On the surface all that tends to make me hopeful. And after all, hope is surely more attractive than despair.

But when I got to thinking about it, I realized that we were a "magnet" of sorts for folks who want to learn to do this kind of stuff. Years ago, most shoeshops had at least one employee who knew how to make shoes...or at least repair quality shoes. Today, finding a shoe repair shop is much harder, let alone expecting to find someone who is either a qualified maker or a competent repairman working there. So, if you want to learn, you've got to look elsewhere.

I suspect that we...you and I...see the folks that have nowhere else to go and who have probably exhausted every other avenue for learning. As spokesmen for our Trades and as people interested in fostering students...and the Trades, themselves...we naturally attract those who are seeking guidance or mentoring.

And bravo for you...and bravo for me...sincerely. It's good work. And rewarding.

But as a percentage of the population...as a percentage of the annual increase in population...I doubt the numbers we are seeing are significant.

But maybe that's just me...

[Bugbear]

I knew that you couldn't be that pessimistic, DWFII.

* BTW, it is the pessimistic; there is no hope for the world; everything is wrong with everything now a days; that felt insulting to me. *

[JRB]

I think there's little chance of a real debate on this subject here. It would seem that on a forum centered around kilts we are all preaching to the choir.

[Bugbear]

The box pleated kilt, and it's story to date, gives me hope, and trust in the ebb and flow of things.

All right, I'm done complaining.

[piperdbh]

I would guess that there are many folks here on XMTS (and many more who are not) who do appreciate quality, who do appreciate the time and skill invested in a particular item, and who would love to own said item, but, because of mortgages and job losses and children's expenses and other limitations, cannot buy the hand-made item and so resort to the mass-produced one. I'm speaking of myself, for one. I'd love to have a hand-forged sgian dubh with a carved wooden handle, but right now my sporran is kind of empty, so I'll make do with the cheap plastic-handled one I bought online. I keep drifting back to L & M Highland's website and lusting after a certain sporran they make, but I can't afford the price tag, so I'll keep wearing the one Tom made me (which is a beautiful work of art that I'm proud to own and wear), and my "Davey Crockett" coonskin.
Two days ago I got a call from a lady wanting a birthday cake. Today. It was to be in a shape and form which I can't discuss on a forum such as this, if you get my drift. In other words, she couldn't get it at the grocery store. Plus, I was going to have to drive 40 miles round trip to deliver it, and work at least half a day to make it. When I told her the price ($40), she told me she couldn't afford it. I don't know what she wound up doing about it, but clearly she had no idea about the cost of a from-scratch, custom birthday cake. Or she's in the same boat as many of the rest of us. My wife and I made our own wedding cake because we had the skill but not the $.

And another thing...
Matt and DWFII hit the hobnail on the head. If young people don't know the value of stuff, or don't know how to do this or that, is it not incumbent upon those of us who do know these things to teach them? That usually involves turning off the television and taking them to a studio or workshop or forge and learning just what it takes to make something. When I knit a pair of hose (or anything else, for that matter) it's not as dramatic as watching a potter or glassblower, but it shows how much time and concentration is needed to follow a pattern and make something wearable.

If you can afford the hand-made item, buy it. Like, for instance, a pair of hand-knit hose, from a certain long-winded member. Many of us would like to be able to afford hand-made things, but we can't. It doesn't necessarily mean we don't appreciate quality.
And yes, I bake my own bread, and I've harvested 375 cucumbers from my garden this summer.