The value of handmade functional art
“In an age of virtual reality [and] AI, … I think people are starving for reality, including the human body and its time-bound skills and limits. Choosing handmade objects, formed with hard-won, sometimes centuries-old skills, answers that hunger. These objects are not part of a throwaway “instant” culture – they have a beauty and touchability that may outlast us. In choosing and using them, the buyer participates in that commitment to reality, to earthy materials like clay, metal, fibers, wood that have been shaped and changed by real human beings and the time they spent making them. It’s an antidote to virtual reality and a culture of endless duplication and replacement of the human.”
-Judith Walker, River of Beauty Designs
