January 2, 2012

Handmade, Homemade, Handcrafted

If you've every clicked on the About Us tab on the Oz Handmade website you will know that we are a
"a collection of creative people who have followed their passion and started to make some money from selling their high quality handmade items"
However there seems to be some debate as to what constitutes "handmade" and bringing up the topic always seems to open a huge can of worms!

From the dictionary:
HANDMADE (adjective) Made by hand, not by machine

That seems pretty straightforward but the confusion / debate /  mud slinging comes into play when you consider what portion of an item must be made by hand for it to be considered handmade.  For example - embellishing a t-shirt might be done by hand but the shirt itself is not handmade, the fabric I use to sew is machine woven and I sew with my machine yet I sell these items under the handmade banner.  

Perhaps what has happened is that the term hand-crafted has now become interchangeable with handmade

HANDCRAFTED (adjective) made by hand with craftsmanship

And just to confuse things even more what about HOMEMADE (made at home rather then in a store or a factory)
When I was first learning to sew I made my niece a dress and her father made the comment that it "looked handmade", he didn't mean it as a compliment and to me the quality of that dress and the ones I now make perfectly illustrate the difference between handmade and homemade.  

In a nutshell what I think is:

HANDMADE no longer literally refers to items made entirely by hand.  Instead they are items that are CRAFTED with skill (and often love) and it is that skill that separates them from HOMEMADE.

But what I really want to know is what do you think?





3 comments:

CathyC said...

Interesting points
I always equate 'handmade' with 'made with love' :-)

CathyC said...

PS - your contact me form is not working :-((
I want to find out how to open a store and what fees/charges are involved.
Can somebody help me?

OZ Handmade said...

Hi Cathy
It is working for me..
So I will look into it thank you.
Can you please email me (Gill) at admin@ozhandmade.com and I will send you the T&C of having a store :)