Organic Handicrafts: Fine art for everyday use
March 29th, 2011
Looking for function, durability, and value, wise shoppers are rediscovering organic handicrafts.
Between 1880 and 1920, European and American artists rediscovered “crafts,” working their magic on everything from fine hardwoods to concrete. The so-called “crafts movement” produced exquisite works of art for everyday use, and the finest architects of the time often went out of their way to incorporate handicrafts in their designs. Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright ornamented some of their most famous designs with the best of the crafts movement. Everything in Frank Lloyd Wright’s own home in Oak Park, Illinois, shows the craft movement’s influence: every piece of furniture was handmade from imported hardwoods in compliance with Wright’s designs, and even the wallpaper was custom-printed by paper artists. Because the crafts movement made a political as well as an artistic statement, protesting exploitation of factory workers who mass-produced household goods, the movement’s wonderworks were fashioned by hand from all-natural materials—“organic handicrafts” in their purest form.
A renaissance in fine organic handicrafts
Not surprisingly, the crafts movement is enjoying a twenty-first century renaissance. Recognizing the earth-friendliness and durability in organic handicrafts, interior designers, fine artists, wise homeowners, and visionary entrepreneurs are using organic and recycled materials as their media-of-choice for everyday household art. Architectural salvage experts are collaborating with custom builders and upscale renovators as they integrate antique organic handicrafts into their post-modern designs. Just as importantly, the world’s best clothing designers are using hand-woven, organically grown fabrics for their apparel lines.
According to Amanda Brennan-Bolanos, an up-and-coming southern California interior designer, “Name any household or office item, and I promise I can outfit you with the organic handicraft model of it.” Ms. Brennan-Bolanos guarantees she can deliver “the handcrafted, organic model” of everything from your plates, glasses, and silverware to your bathtub and toilet. Or she can outfit you with an organic hand-crafted computer desk and custom-fitted office chair. She also can find an organic-handcrafted hardwood floor for your home or office. She concedes you pay a little more for these custom-crafted artifacts, but she stresses they are “indestructible” even in the roughest everyday use. “And when your children, grand-children, and great-grandchildren inherit your home or business, the organic handicrafts will still look good as new,” she stresses.
Organic handicrafts in home décor
The word “handicrafts” takes precedence in the discussion of all-natural home and office products. Post-modern craftspersons invest their talent, skill, pride, and passion in fashioning furniture, draperies, bedding, stoneware, glassware, and silverware by hand, using techniques first perfected in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Moreover, they add features that enhance both function and durability to their organic handicrafts—dovetailing in furniture joints, carving in table legs and feet, extra high sides for spill-proofing on dishes and bowls, and all-brass hand-forged faucets on bathroom fixtures.
Woodworkers show their sensitivity to environmental issues, acknowledging that some of the world’s finest hardwoods have been harvested from endangered South American rainforests or old-growth North American timber. They stress, however, in order to satisfy the strictest standards for labeling their products “organic,” they frequently must use recycled hardwoods, fashioning their handicrafts from recycled building materials. Sean McCreary, a furniture maker, argues, “If I used particle board, plywood, or plantation-grown wood in my pieces, I not only would encourage poor forest management but also would introduce all kinds of volatile organic chemicals into people’s homes. Particle board, the essential material in most manufactured furniture, is some nasty, nasty stuff,” he shakes his head in disgust.
Organic handicrafts in fine apparel
“Factory-farmed” cotton ravages the earth. In order to grow cotton year after year on the same acreage, commercial cotton farmers must pre-treat the soil and then constantly “nourish” their crops with chemical fertilizers, because cotton sucks all the nutrients from the soil as it grows and blossoms. Even more dangerously, protecting their crops from weevils and other pests, commercial cotton farmers use extremely toxic pesticides that frequently work their way into water supplies. In the third world, major cotton producers use a variety of chemicals banned in the United States and throughout the European Union. Even with extensive laundering, cotton fibers do not release all the toxins they have collected as they have grown. Cotton stands-out simply as the most extreme example. High-volume producers of almost all fabrics abuse the environment in their relentless pursuit of profits. Sadly, they compromise not only the quality of their land and produce but also the quality of their products.
By sharp contrast, organically grown and hand-woven fabrics dyed with vegetable colors generally are softer, more workable, and far more durable than their commercial equivalents. More importantly, organic, hand-crafted fabrics do not waste water in manufacturing, nor do they pump chlorine bleach into the waste water. Of course, weaving these fabrics leaves little if any carbon footprint, and your great-grandmother’s quilts testify the fabric and garments crafted from it will last for at least a century.
