Is Handmade Furniture Just a Fad?

“Locally-made, organic & home-grown, sustainably sourced from recycled materials, and lovingly hand-crafted”

These may seem like quite the heap of buzzwords, yet, as consumers, we see them everywhere nowadays – especially in high-end markets. There’s a recent resurgence in fascination with handmade and artisanal goods. It seems as if, perhaps overnight, the deciding factor in labeling an object as “high-end” essentially became down to our perception of how long it took a human to make.

This seems to be a drastic shift in the predominant consumer mindset that existed only a few decades earlier. The rising popularity of sites like Etsy and the growing awareness of the facade of quickly-made, mass-produced goods from stores such as Ikea are excellent examples of this paradigm shift. So, these terms are popular, but are they just buzzwords? Is this new wave of appreciation for environmentally-friendly handmade goods just a fad? To form an answer, let’s examine the core of why these goods are popular.

Handmade objects have an inherent aspect of personality to them, and that’s good for the soul.

When you’re buying something literally made by someone else’s hands, you are buying a bit of that person’s passion and their dedicated time. Before the contemporary handmade movement, many objects in our homes were made by machines almost instantly. However, what the handmade object offers that cannot be provided by a machine-made one is a piece of intangible soul. We feel good being surrounded by objects made with purpose and passion; it’s why art has been popular for so long. This is an aspect of humanity that we think will persist beyond this new movement. But what about the growing focus on sustainability?

 Sustainably sourced materials have a positive effect on the world around us.

This is one aspect of the handmade movement that I believe people can get behind unanimously. By using reclaimed materials or materials from environmentally-conscious distributors, we are doing what we can to reduce our negative impact on future generations. As humans continue to consider their impact on the environment, this trend will likely grow into way of life.

Will these trends continue? What do you think? They might be buzzwords, but they are undoubtedly rooted in good intentions. At Little Board, we pride ourselves on the quality of our handmade goods. By using reclaimed wood in many of our designs and making all of our furniture by hand, we are committed to this contemporary movement. The eco-friendly handmade movement is one that we hope will stick around.