November 14, 2018 • 42 mins
This holiday season, more people than ever are seeking out handmade, locally-sourced gifts from the likes of Etsy. But the online marketplace is only one part of a broader crafting revival interwoven with political activism, feminism and entrepreneurial spirit.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've
never told to you. And it's gift giving season for
some of us anyway, And if you're thinking that you
(00:26):
want to make your own gifts this year, or if
you want to decorate a wedding, perhaps you are not alone.
D I y Crafting is having a moment, and I
have a feeling a lot of you listeners are super
creative and crafty. In fact, I know a lot of
you are because you email in with some of the
stuff that you've created and we love it. Please keep
it up, so yeah, let us know what you're making.
(00:47):
And in the meantime, enjoy this classic episode about the
d I y craft Revival. Welcome to Stuff Mob Never
told You from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And Caroline,
(01:08):
I think I've shared this with you before. When I
was younger, as in during my childhood, my mom taught
me and my sisters how to cross stitch, and I
learned how to crochet, and I spent a lot of
time doing that kind of yarn work, needlework. I tempted
(01:30):
to learn how to knit, but that's as far as
my skill set got me. I have no such skill
set to speak of. Um. I made a gem Halloween
costume a couple of years ago, and man, those stitches
on the silver belt that I had to make, we're
embarrassing pretty the chunky kind of stitch. Yeah, it was
(01:53):
just like up and down, in and out. Hey. But
there there you go. You're sewing. Um. I will say though,
after reading up for this episode on the revival of
Crafting and Handmade, I want to pick up my crochet
needles again. Yeah. I want to make something. I don't
know what, but I gotta I've got a hankering to
make something. Yeah. Well, it's also the holiday season, and
(02:16):
one of the reasons why we wanted to talk about
crafting is because with gift buying these days, a lot
more people are turning to local sellers and looking specifically
for handmade crafted items. Yeah. I actually bought my boyfriend
one of his Christmas presents is something that is handcrafted
(02:39):
by an artisan somewhere. I don't know, New Jersey or something.
I don't really know where it's from, but it is
handmade and I can't say what it is on the
podcast in case he listens. Yeah, I don't know if
he listens or not. Well, just in case. But follow
up question, though, Caroline, this won't give anything away. Can
you say whether you bought it on Etsy? I did
(03:01):
not buy it on Etsy, but I bought it on
another website that features very small production type of projects. Okay,
so in Etsy type of store. Well, we've got to
talk about etc. When it comes to holiday shopping, because
this past Black Friday weekend they had their hugest sales
(03:24):
weekend ever. Uh. They had a sixty year over year
increase in sales compared to last year, which you don't
need to have a degree in business and marketing to
know that. That is a lot. That is a lot.
And it's interesting to read the trend stories about Etsy
(03:44):
around this time every year because every single year the
lead is like, holy goodness, Etsy is selling even more
stuff than they did last year. The percent increases are ridiculous,
and the website enjoys forty two million unique visitors per
month going to more than eight hundred thousand shops filled
(04:06):
with fifteen million products. I know that when I go
on Etsy, just as like a casual browser. You know,
if I'm not specifically looking for something. It can be overwhelming.
There is so much stuff on there and you kind
of have to weed through a lot too. Yeah, And
for people out there who are really invested in crafting
and handmade, don't worry. We aren't just going to talk
(04:28):
about Etsy. But I feel like etc. Is such a
household name and one of the reasons, big reasons I
would say, for crafting kind of re entering the mainstream
in the past five ten years. And the incredible thing
about Etsy is how quickly it has picked up speed
(04:50):
because as a website, it turned profitable in two thousand
nine and it only been live at that point for
a less than four years, which, if you know anything
about digital marketing, turning a profit that quickly is pretty good.
And by two thousand twelve, it was generating almost nine
hundred million dollars in sales alone, Yeah, which is pretty
(05:14):
darn impressive that that many people are spending that much
money on handmade or mostly handmade goods. Etsy itself charges
about twenty cents for every item listed and makes about
three point five percent of every sale. And that said,
though a minority of sellers are full time et s
(05:34):
prenewers um I actually know of a woman here in
Atlanta who started a business on Etsy a few years back,
just making really cute handmade labels for things like preserve
jars and labels. Now she has a lot of things
for um, like wedding place cards and things like that,
(05:56):
and now she does the still on the side of
her full time job. But Caroline, she's making probably twenty
five th extra dollars a year. Whoa, whoa. That is
so much more money. It's incredible that that is incredible,
And I mean that's also so much more money than
just your average as a seller makes. That's true. Yeah,
she's definitely at the top of her game in terms
(06:19):
of that, because the average seller is making under four
thousand dollars a year actually, right, so basically just enough
to notice the difference in your income and be able
to pay for things, but not enough to quit your
day job basically. But nevertheless, even though people and and
it's largely women, aren't making enough to just retire on
(06:41):
and as at the retirement fund um, it's still a
new kind of industry, right. It's this thing. It's part
of a growing micro business economy basically, and a lot
of people talk about how the government fails to capture
a lot of these sellers in that exists in these
and formal economies are kind of falling through the cracks
(07:02):
because if you think about it in terms of like
the larger economy, we're in an interesting time now. We're
kind of coming out of the recession and everything, but
we still have middle class issues. We still have issues
of the disappearing middle class and people not being able
to find work. And so the majority of Etsy sellers
are combining, actually combining multiple sources of income. Only twenty
(07:26):
have full time jobs outside of Etsy. And one feature
of Etsy that is really appealing to women, in particularly moms,
is that the child care issues with an Etsy job
or obviously as about as flexible as you can get
because you are oftentimes working in your home or as
(07:47):
some women will describe how you know, after the kids
will go to bed, then they can start sewing, working
on their projects. And I mean, I think it it's
clear from what we're talking about that it Etsy businesses
are are serious business for a lot of people. Etsy
did a survey looking at I think more than like
five thousand of their sellers and found that se sellers
(08:09):
say their shops are their businesses, and nine of those
want to grow their sales, but only to something that
they themselves can manage. So the bulk of people on Etsy,
I would venture to say, are not trying to create
some mega corporation from their sewing or their stuffed animals
or whatever, you know, things like that. They they still
(08:30):
want to be considered a small time crafter, but that
extra income, especially in this economy, can make a huge
difference for a lot of people. But more broadly speaking,
some people point to Etsy as a sign of a
craft revival that we're in. UM. Chris Anderson, who is
the founding editor of Wired magazine, called it the maker
(08:54):
movement UM and other people have given it other terms.
Your your crafters, you're makers, your handmade artisans, whatever you
want to call it. There is certainly a resurgence in
people making things, maybe more slowly and by hand and
in smaller numbers. And so this actually kind of harkens
(09:16):
back to an interview that you fair listeners might have
listened to previously that we did with Emily Matcher, who's
the author of Homeward Bound, and she's a big part
of this, you know, quote unquote new domesticity movement. Yeah,
she focuses a lot on all of the various kinds
of crafts that people are doing and how that even
extends into people are doing homesteading and having backyard chicken
(09:39):
coops and all of how all of those different things intersect.
But when we look at this craft aspect, it's interesting
to see how it started, because it did not start
with Etsy, as I'm sure a lot of listeners know
and are waiting for us to hopefully say, no, it
did not start with Etsy. Um. In the book, which
(10:01):
is also a documentary Handmade Nation by Faith Levine and
Courtney him Roule, they have a delightful timeline of what
they call the New Wave of Craft, and they begin
their timeline in n and it really starts out this
new wave of craft as they call it, in sort
(10:22):
of a Riot Girl type of fashion, with a lot
of things happening in the Portland's, Seattle Olympia, Washington area,
and it's a lot of women initiated alternative crafting communities
and zines that start popping up. Yeah, and this should
sound familiar too if you listen to our Riot Girl
episode in which we talked about zines and d I
(10:43):
y and punk music and all of those things. People
making their own clothes, making their own publications, all all
of that stuff. And so this is kind of happening
around that same time. So in the period nine nine
we have some developments in this movement by Olympia dot
Com goes live, a glitter Boards, an alternative crafting community
goes live. You have get Crafty dot com which goes live.
(11:05):
It's put out there by Gene Rayla. Uh. And then
young Blood here in Atlanta opens which is pretty awesome
store if I do say so myself. Yeah, and uh
for fans of Bust magazine, that's when it's She's Crafty
column starts up. And from there, once we enter into
the two thousands, things start to move from just communities
(11:27):
and groups to actually having more brick and mortar establishments,
kind of like Young Blood here in Atlanta. Uh. You
have things like Needles and Pens opening up in San Francisco,
Coggan Pearl opening up in uh New York. You have
I Heart Rummage in Seattle, and then you have more
websites start to pop up, one of which is not
(11:48):
Martha dot org. Because remember this is also during the
heyday of Martha Stewart who helped fuel some of this
d I Y ethos. But this is not exactly the
Martha Stewart tie type of crafting. Yeah, I would say
they're more parallel. They're not exactly interring. I mean they
are intersecting. But I would venture to say that maybe
(12:09):
the people who are reading Martha's magazines and watching her
TV shows are taking a different route than the women
who are participating in this sort of craft revival movement. Yeah.
I think of it more as like the punk rock
Martha Stewart. So yeah, as we move forward, it and
(12:35):
this movement starts to get bigger and bigger and attract
more people who are just like super intenitting. We get
things like the Austin Craft Mafia UM and a bunch
of other communities popping up in in different cities across
the country. And then you get fairs and festivals. Um,
you get the Ladies Independent Design League starting in New
York City in the mid two thousands, and just bigger
(12:59):
craft fairs and try auctions continue to pop up. Yeah,
and you also have specialty magazines like Ready Made and
Craft Magazine launching And then yes, we must circle back
again to Etsy, which goes live in two thousand six.
And the story of how Etsy is born is interesting
(13:19):
because it starts out with this guy named Robert kalin
who was originally brought in by Gene raally A to
redesign her site, get crafty dot com. And she had
found the site she'd been going for a while and
he came in and he had kind of been like
doing other things and was kind of trying to find
(13:39):
his way in the business world, figure out what he
wanted to do, and he really gravitated toward this radical
crafting ethos and all of these festivals and fairs that
were happening as well, and a light bulb went off
in his head, saying, you know what, what if we
developed a business model around all of these individual sellers
(14:06):
tables that I see at all these festivals. Yeah, And
there was a New York Times article talking about this
movement and mentioning Robert Kalen, and it doesn't paint him,
I think, in the most favorable light, but it is
interesting to read because you know, if you just say, like, oh,
this guy came in to redesign this lady's craft website
(14:26):
and he got the idea to make money. It's it's
actually much more than that. He was a philosophy student.
You know. He spoke at length to the New York
Times reporter about the handmade philosophy. He said, it's not
a fat ats a resurgence, and so it was more
than just a guy wanting to make money off of
a trend that was built largely on the hands and
(14:47):
knitting needles of women. Um, he really found himself fighting
against the big box store mentality in our country. Yeah.
I mean, there was definitely a very re real idealism
that was going into the founding of Etsy, and it
took off pretty quickly because by late two thousand seven
(15:08):
it had seventy thousand sellers, nine percent of whom were women,
and on July twenty nine, two thousand nine, it achieved
its one millionth sale. Right. So, as Etsy is building
its following and getting more and more sellers on their
selling their amazing creative weares it's still part of a subculture.
(15:29):
It's still not taking over the market, and it's still
not infiltrating the general online shopping consciousness, you could say. Um.
And during this time, Faith Levine, who we mentioned at
the top of the podcast, she's the author of Handmade
Nation and also made the documentary about this community. She's
taking notice and she really wanted to document what was
(15:51):
going on. Yeah, and so she traveled around the country
interviewing crafters, makers, artisans about their process, their philosophy, um,
their experience being someone who's in this handmade world. And
she really wanted to make that documentary Handmade Nation, she says,
(16:11):
because she could sense that the crafting tide was swelling
and she wanted to do this herself and make this
documentary in the right way. Before, as she told it,
there would be some kind of reality show about cute
girls crafting that would just ruin the whole thing. Can
(16:31):
you imagine. I can't imagine. I can't imagine. I can
totally imagine. Um. Yeah, she has an interesting quote. She said,
I believe the simple act of making something, anything with
your hands is quite a political ripple in a world
dominated by mass production, and people choosing to make something
will turn these small ripples into waves. And I mean
she should know. She went from just crafting zines and
(16:54):
sock monkeys in her apartment to churning out a ton
of products in eating stuffed owls, which are a thing
now quite a thing, quite a thing. Uh. And and
that was back in two thousand two that she was
selling a ton of her stuff online. But again echoing
that Riot Girl podcast, her description in a profile in
(17:15):
The New York Times in two thousand nine was a
quote sometimes artist who made punk rock magazines. So clearly
we've got that hardcore d I Y undercurrent. And in
those interviews with those crafters and Handmade Nation, there are
these themes that constantly come up of wanting to be
(17:36):
anti industrial, anti institutional, anti consumerists, and also this appeal
of being highly entrepreneurial. And so you really see this
intersection of politics with these handmade goods. And in this
PBS article about Handmade Nation, because it got a lot
(17:57):
of press at the time, it described how quilts are
cutting edge outlets for self expression and samplers carry messages
of anti consumerism, environmentalism, and feminism. It's interesting. I mean,
now you know we're coming. I feel like this is
a conversation that we've had, you know, obviously on different
topics in the podcast before, about things that are considered
(18:20):
feminine being reclaimed, and you know, it's part of this
this quote unquote new domesticity, a term itself which doesn't
necessarily sit well with everyone, but more of just that
political movement towards Okay, well, quilting is such a woman thing,
but I'm going to do it, and it's going to
be radical because you know, it's it's part of a
new upsurge of creativity, of creation. Yeah, and there are
(18:44):
even crafters out there who specifically make hand goods, not
so much for the utility or for home decor or
whatever you want it to be, but actually to make
a direct political statement. So you might have people like
arn't bombers out there who are going and wrapping up
different things out in structures, out in parks or um,
(19:08):
just like out in public spaces um. And and there's
a term for this, it's called craftivism, which I believe
was coined by Betsy Greer, who was the author of
Knitting for Good. And there are all of these groups
as well who are into craftivism. And it's not just
yarn bombing, but there is a lot of knitting involved. Yeah.
(19:30):
And these groups include, uh, people like the Anarchist Knitting Circle,
the Revolutionary Knitting Circle, and micro Revolt. And it's funny
we Christen and I read the study that talked about
this whole craftivist movement and the gender aspects of it
and how this is not Martha's crafting. You know, you're
you're taking something like you know, knitting, which happens in
(19:52):
the home and it's traditionally like your grandmother doing it,
but you're pairing it with these quote unquote masculine ideas
about revolution and un revolt and anarchy and like knitting
death matches, things that are very competitive and outside the home,
and just kind of mixing up those stereotypes. Yeah, and
(20:12):
just the very act of taking that domestic work into
the public sphere where it's completely unavoidable. You can't not
look at a giant tree that was in Atlanta on
a on a main thoroughfare that had been nit bombed.
And this also, though, two points to the massive spectrum
(20:33):
of Etsy and crafting in general. From this, you know,
the anarchist knitting circle all the way down to the
person who is just making a few extra bucks selling
some thrifted clothes or handmade stationary, whatever it might be.
It's kind of fascinating to see how all of these
different people are being united knit together. If you will
(20:57):
through this movement. Yeah, well, I mean certainly, though not
everyone is excited about it. You know, we spoke about
the Martha audience, and I certainly don't want to put
any Martha fans down out there at all. But in
speaking to The New York Times, Andrew Wagner, the editor
of American Craft magazine, said that older generations of crafters
(21:18):
didn't really take a shine to this new trend. Basically,
he said, the old guard was saying, it took me
twenty years to master my craft, and these kids think
they can just start by stitching owls. And I see,
I see where that attitude would come from. Because if
you're making a quilt because you're an expert quilter, and
whether you want to make money or whether you're just
making it for your grandkids, you might be like, what
(21:40):
are these kids doing, you know, making stuffed birds? But
you know, to that, I say, like, if somebody wants
to freaking stitch a stuffed animal, let them. Yeah. And
the thing is, Wagner was going on to talk about
how they have retooled. That's kind of a pun American
Craft Magazine to bridge those two worlds, because as the
(22:00):
thing about it is those craft people of your share
a lot of the same ideologies as these radical crafters today.
Because there was something called the arts and crafts movement
that happened first in the United States at the turn
(22:20):
of the century, and then there was a revival in
the sixties and seventies. And it's those those baby boomers
of the sixties and seventies who took parton that revival
who might look askance at what's going on today and
say that it's not legit. But those arts and crafts
movements were still fueled by the same reactions against mass production,
(22:42):
industrialization and things like that. Yeah, it's very cyclical. I mean,
our older generations, I would hope can see that, you know,
people our age participating in crafting and things like that
are just part of the same cycle that they themselves
were on. Um. The movement in the sixties and seventies
emerged thanks to Princeton professor Robert Judson Clark, who in
(23:04):
nineteen seventy two directed an exhibition about the American Arts
and Crafts movement from eighteen seventy six to nineteen sixteen. So,
I mean it goes back and back and back and
back that these arts and crafts cycles have popped up. Yeah,
And and the first arts and crafts movement actually started
in England during the late Victorian period and was promoted
(23:25):
by theorists and art critic John Ruskin. And then it
travels across the Atlantic to the United States, where it
actually is renamed I should have said, the studio craft movement.
And this was happening in seven that's when the first
Society of Arts and Crafts emerged in Boston. But you
have them popping up and all of the largest urban
(23:47):
centers in the US. Yeah, and it really arose kind
of as all of these as all of these ups
and downs in the arts and crafts movement do it
really arose as a critique of industrial labor um. They
were fighting against lowered standards for design that they said
had been debased by mechanization. They wanted to elevate the
(24:08):
designer as craftsmen um. And so in these urban centers
in America you have men really leading the movement. But
there were a lot of training centers established to teach
women certain skills, especially immigrant young women um, such as
Boston's Sunday Evening Girls Club, which was established in as
just a reading group for immigrant girls. But right there
(24:31):
at the turn of the century, they founded the very
American named Paul Revere Pottery, offering the girls in the
group a chance to earn money. Yeah, and and pottery
was often taught to women, along with metalwork, textiles, and
jewelry making. So these are really interesting skills. And to
think about that happening in the late eighteen hundreds, early
(24:52):
nineteen hundreds is pretty fascinating, you know, just because of
how you still see similar kinds of things happening today.
Direct outreach of teaching people, maybe in lower income communities,
how to make handmade goods that they can then sell
and create supplementary income. Um. And from there, though, you
(25:14):
do have it trickling into more mainstream outlets. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art noted how in the early twentieth century
you have magazines like House Beautiful and Ladies Home Journal
that really took these ideas of elevating design and craft
in the home and interiors and popularizing them. I love
(25:37):
House Beautiful, Yeah, I mean, it's almost too aspirational for
me at this point. Um, But it is fascinating to
think of a magazine like Ladies Home Journal a house
beautiful in the hands of maybe an upper middle class
woman at the time who unbeknownst to her is reading
about things that were really seeded by a lot of
(26:00):
radical socialists. Yeah, and I think, I mean, the socialist
roots were definitely stronger in England during the rise of
their arts and crafts movement. In America, those socialist tendencies
were pretty much limited to the big urban center societies,
not so much like your your rural Deerfield, Massachusetts societies
(26:23):
for aults and crafts. Yeah. And it was in the
sixties and the seventies with that Princeton professor that you mentioned, Caroline,
where he really uncovered this past movement and the mostly
male designers of note from the time, and so you
have that resurgence and no big surprise that it would
happen at that time during so much social upheaval in
(26:46):
general and so many reactions against massive institutions. Yeah. But
I mean, it's it's interesting that a lot of these
crafting movements kind of circle around activities that are so
often considered a like a home sphere, a woman's sphere
activity kind of well, in speaking of which, that's something
(27:08):
that you see especially happening in the seventies because you're
now in second wave feminism, and so you see a
similar reclamation of women's work in artistic movements. Um. And
this is going back to to that paper we mentioned
called Fabricating Activism, craft Work, Popular Culture, and Gender by
(27:31):
Zach z Braditch and Heidi M. Brush Um, which talks
about craftivism, yes, but also how this gender play so
much into craft work and fabric culture. And in it
they talk about how sewing circles, quilting groups and the
like were organizing bodies of first wave feminism. And so
(27:53):
then in the seventies, with second wave feminism, you see
a return to those formerly derided crass because oh, it's
just women's work. They're just doing that in the home right.
And it is those uh, basically those women's work activities
that are decried as they're they're not high art. They're
just making a quilt because they need a quilt. It's
(28:15):
there's no fine art about it. And you have Lucy
Lippard who in three wood an essay called Household Images
in Art in which she says that during the Women's movement,
women had the confidence to begin quote shedding their shackles
proudly untying the apron strings and in some cases keeping
the apron on, flaunting it and turning it into art. Yeah,
(28:39):
and today you still see those undercurrents of female empowerment,
whether it's something as simple as the stay at home
mom who is stitching up her etc. Wares to make
extra income after the kids go to sleep, or the
full time d I y revolutionary who is literally trying
to change the world via crafting and craftis um. Yeah.
(29:02):
Gene Reala, the founder of Get Crafty, who we mentioned earlier,
echoes this whole sentiment. She talked to The New York
Times in two thousand and seven and said, I really
came to it from more of an indie rock to
it yourself kind of political place, sort of married with
making peace with feminism, And that echoes those second way
feminists back in the seventies like Miriam Shapiro, who said
(29:23):
I wanted to validate the traditional activities of women, to
connect myself to the unknown women artists who had made quilts,
who had done the invisible women's work of civilization. So
in that regard, crafting is really freaking politically significant. Yeah,
and it's more, it gets even more interesting today too,
(29:44):
when we see how more men are being brought into
this so called women's work, we have gender divide slowly
being brought down. Just in terms of Etsy, for instance,
twelve percent of the sellers are men, and there was
a two thousand and eight post on the Etsy blog
(30:04):
interviewing male sellers, one of whom says that he often
surprises people when he talks about his sewing and knitting.
And there is still admittedly a gender divide in terms
of quote unquote manly craft like woodwork, leather work, and metallurgy. UM.
I also have a couple of guy friends who are
really into screen printing, UM, both hobby and making their income. UM.
(30:28):
And Harry Sawyers, who's an associate editor at Popular Mechanics
magazine he helped compile the new book man Craft, said
that crafts and men definitely go together. It showcases rough
hewn skills like leather tooling and ax whittling well. And
I'm sure that those guys out there who are doing
woodworking or knitting or screen printing, whatever it is, share
(30:50):
the same enjoyment of making something on their own, being creative,
being artistic, and taking time outside and away. For UM.
This fast moving, tech fueled, mobile, digital, you know, just
all consuming seven kind of pace that we're now living in.
(31:12):
And there was this inc story that we read about
this whole Etsy trend and basically like what is going
to happen to Etsy down the road with its under
its new CEO, Chad Dickerson, And it interviewed this guy
who had been working in a great, you know, great
office job, stable, making good money, but he was just
he felt so disconnected from the world at large and
(31:34):
wasn't able to be the kind of creative person that
he wanted to be. So he ended up starting to
make leather goods like bags and stuff, and um, he
started to feel really fulfilled and it took off and
he was selling a bajillion bags and finally he was like,
I can't even stay on Etsy anymore because I followed
my true passion and I'm making these bags and I
(31:56):
get to be creative, but there's no way that I
can keep up with consumer demand for my stuff and
still stay quote unquote handmade on Etsy. Well, didn't you
mention at the top of the podcast with that etc.
Survey how a lot of people want to keep their
stores to a manageable size, which you can't make a
(32:17):
ton of things if you are one person. Um, and
you have a lot of people, especially this time of
year where they are working seven speaking of a seven environment,
but working all hours just to meet the holiday demand
because so many people do want handmade. Now it's actually
taxing the people who are making all of these goods.
(32:41):
And so that is a big question though for crafting,
and especially with its intersection with Etsy and how big
Etsy has become. It's people wondering whether or not that
original ethos of small and environmentally conscious and anti consumerist,
whether those philosophies have just been watered down the larger
(33:02):
that the business itself has gotten. Yeah, a lot of
people are none too pleased with the direction they see
Etsy going because CEO Robert Kalin was removed by the
board recently and so Chad Dickerson took over, and it's
Etsy has really flourished under him, depending on what your
(33:23):
definition of flourishes. I mean, Um, there's a lot more
sellers making a lot more money. And Dickerson really had
to wrestle with the idea of how do you make
more money as a website as a business when your
sellers your most successful sellers grow and then are forced
off the website, like that guy who who made bags
(33:44):
and you know, leather goods and stuff like, once you
hit a certain point on Etsy, you have to go elsewhere.
And so there they are trying to find a way
to keep more of their successful sellers, so you know,
they can keep some of those dollars in how than,
so a lot of people are calling Etsy like Etsy
Bay now saying it's getting too big, and so they're
(34:06):
wrestling now with calling the idea of calling people designers,
letting them be designers, so you're you don't have to
be a maker necessarily, you can call yourself a designer,
but outsourced the production to an actual manufacturer, to which
some would say, oh, well, why am I going on
Etsy to buy something that might ultimately be made in
(34:27):
a sweatshop, even if it's designed by someone in their home.
So I mean, yeah, it's going to be interesting to
see the direction that it takes um and also the
fact that the ets style, that kind of vintagy, kitchy,
crafty look and aesthetic is something that you're seeing more
(34:48):
and more in any story you walk into any kind
of urban outfitters forever twenty one. I mean they they
even what sc even has a direct partnership now with
west Elm, which is owned by WILLIAMS Sonoma. Yeah. I
uh well, first of all, I love getting West Elm catalogs,
and not that I can afford a single freaking thing
in there, but uh yeah, they do. They feature Etsy
(35:11):
made creations throughout their catalog. You know, they'll have a
living room set up, but they'll have art on the
walls or a vase on the table, and they'll have
a little blurb about the the artist. And for someone
who wants to make it a full time business, then
that's probably great. But then again, you just wonder where
is there going to be a moment of divergence again
(35:31):
between the business path and we're consumerist path and that
philosophical path, which makes me wonder if in twenty years,
fifty years, if we'll be going through yet another craft revival. Yeah,
and it should also be interesting to see kind of
where this this micro business economy goes, because the bulk
(35:53):
of sellers on at Sea, for instance, are women, and
so what was the statu was something like triple number
of women owned businesses documented by the U S Census.
You know that those are the et SE numbers. They're
sitting their own hours, they're not having to worry about childcare.
And but if we're not documenting them well enough and
they're not having a social safety net like health insurance,
(36:14):
I don't know. It should be interesting to see where
these micro businesses, especially the women owned businesses, because they
seem to be behind the bulk of them, where they
will end up, Whether it will go in the direction
of being a solid supplementary income that women can rely on,
especially you know, think about single moms or just women
in general who might need some extra cash. Um, it's
(36:37):
becoming a new asset, a new answer with that giant
question mark that comes with working versus or plus motherhood
or whether or not it's just going to become so
large that those opportunities will gradually fade away. So I'll
send it on an up note though, since it's the holidays,
(36:59):
support handmade local goods. Yeah, I I for one, I'm
gonna visit Young Blood Boutique very soon to look for
a present for my boyfriend's mother, because you know, I mean,
it's always it just always looks more thoughtful and it
is more thoughtful. I feel like to take time and
and look through handmade crafted things. Absolutely, and one of
(37:20):
my favorite things to do. Um, sorry if you're one
of the million people that I've given this too, but
one of my favorite things to do for presence is
go around to some of the local boutiques in Atlanta
and get family members local stuff, whether it's locally made
jams or locally made jewelry. I think that that feels
more personalized and thoughtful than going to Target. Yeah, yeah,
(37:42):
all the nothing against Target. Hey, I shop there all
the time. So I hope that there are some crafters,
some makers, some artisans listening. We want to hear from you.
What do you think about the work that you're doing.
Do you feel compelled by any kind to political philosophy
or you're just doing it to make a buck? Um?
(38:03):
Have you thought much about this Etsy conundrum? Let us
know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is
where you can write us, and you can also tweet
us a mom Stuff podcast or message us on Facebook.
And we've got a couple of messages to share with
you when we come right back from a quick break
(38:32):
and now back to our letters, and we've got a
couple of letters here from our two part series that
we did on rape and sexual assault in the United States,
and this one is from Joseph and the subject line
is men's role in stopping rape. He writes, this has
been a very important subject to me as my wife
(38:54):
is a victim of rape and sexual assault. When hearing
these stories from her, I couldn't help but get angry
and encourage her to report the incidents to the police.
She did not, unfortunately, because she did not believe that
there was enough evidence for anything to be done. They
had occurred a while back before we met, and the
perpetrator was someone she knew well. Feeling a bit helpless,
I turned to the Internet for more information on how
(39:14):
to get involved in stopping sexual violence and increasing the
rate of reporting, and my searches I learned more and
more about rape culture and the social constructs around it.
Over time, I've come to notice, even in the effort
of understanding and stopping rape, the concentration is much more
on who gets raped and not on who commits rape.
Even the vocabulary concentrates on female victims of rape and
(39:36):
not sexual violence against women. After watching an amazing ted
talk from Jackson Cat's PhD I came to the belief
that we should be talking more about men's sexual violence.
It has to be recognized that this is not a
woman's issue primarily, but instead it is first a men's issue.
Why our men's are sexually violent and how do we
(39:56):
get men to be less violent are much more important
questions than I if so many women get raped? And
how do we stop women from getting raped? To end
this on a positive note, I have found that I'm
by no means the only guy out there trying to
change my way of thinking and that of my peers.
A Good Men Project and Men Can Stop Rape are
just a couple of organizations devoted to giving men guidance
(40:17):
on engaging other men in these topics and encouraging education
about consent. I hope you can at least mention our
two groups on the podcast, since I'm sure you have
plenty of male and female listeners who want to get involved.
Love the podcast, and thank you for having the courage
to speak openly and raise awareness. So thank you, Joseph.
I have a letter here from Evan. She is a
(40:37):
sophomore in high school. She says, I really want to
thank you for your sexual assault series. From these past
few weeks. It's an issue that's really close to my
heart and that seems to be horribly misrepresented in general.
High school is infamous with the constant stories about people
being sent home for wearing leggings to school and whatnot.
I do have good news though. This past year, I've
noticed my school really taking initiative to bring rape culture
(40:59):
and especially slut shaming, out of the dark. I'm a
columnist on my school paper, and last year we ran
a column about Todd Aiken's musings in our first issue.
This year, in September, we covered the Chicago slut Walk
on the front page, and my slut shaming column was
in that issue as well. The reaction was overwhelming, particularly
this year. We received a ridiculous number of letters from
people who have experienced slut shaming, as well as boys
(41:21):
telling us it got them thinking. The goal of a
columnist is always to start a conversation, and so I'm
thankful to be in an educational environment that's accepting of
these discussions. I guess I just wanted to share a
positive experience regarding rape culture in the educational environment because
we hear so much about schools being unsupportive. Thanks again
for being so great, and thank you for being so great,
Evan and participating in a very important discussion. Yeah, and
(41:44):
hey becoming a student journalist, Thank you and me cool,
and thanks to everybody who has written in Mom's Stuff
at Discovery dot com is where you can send us
your letters. You can also follow us on Twitter at
mom Stuff Podcast. You can find us on Facebook. You
can follow us on Tumbler at stuff mom Never Told
You dot tumbler dot com, as well as on Instagram
(42:05):
at stuff Mom Never Told You, And of course you
can also check us out on YouTube. It's YouTube dot
com slash stuff Mom Never Told You And don't forget
folks to subscribe for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com
Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've
never told to you. And it's gift giving season for
some of us anyway, And if you're thinking that you
(00:26):
want to make your own gifts this year, or if
you want to decorate a wedding, perhaps you are not alone.
D I y Crafting is having a moment, and I
have a feeling a lot of you listeners are super
creative and crafty. In fact, I know a lot of
you are because you email in with some of the
stuff that you've created and we love it. Please keep
it up, so yeah, let us know what you're making.
(00:47):
And in the meantime, enjoy this classic episode about the
d I y craft Revival. Welcome to Stuff Mob Never
told You from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And Caroline,
(01:08):
I think I've shared this with you before. When I
was younger, as in during my childhood, my mom taught
me and my sisters how to cross stitch, and I
learned how to crochet, and I spent a lot of
time doing that kind of yarn work, needlework. I tempted
(01:30):
to learn how to knit, but that's as far as
my skill set got me. I have no such skill
set to speak of. Um. I made a gem Halloween
costume a couple of years ago, and man, those stitches
on the silver belt that I had to make, we're
embarrassing pretty the chunky kind of stitch. Yeah, it was
(01:53):
just like up and down, in and out. Hey. But
there there you go. You're sewing. Um. I will say though,
after reading up for this episode on the revival of
Crafting and Handmade, I want to pick up my crochet
needles again. Yeah. I want to make something. I don't
know what, but I gotta I've got a hankering to
make something. Yeah. Well, it's also the holiday season, and
(02:16):
one of the reasons why we wanted to talk about
crafting is because with gift buying these days, a lot
more people are turning to local sellers and looking specifically
for handmade crafted items. Yeah. I actually bought my boyfriend
one of his Christmas presents is something that is handcrafted
(02:39):
by an artisan somewhere. I don't know, New Jersey or something.
I don't really know where it's from, but it is
handmade and I can't say what it is on the
podcast in case he listens. Yeah, I don't know if
he listens or not. Well, just in case. But follow
up question, though, Caroline, this won't give anything away. Can
you say whether you bought it on Etsy? I did
(03:01):
not buy it on Etsy, but I bought it on
another website that features very small production type of projects. Okay,
so in Etsy type of store. Well, we've got to
talk about etc. When it comes to holiday shopping, because
this past Black Friday weekend they had their hugest sales
(03:24):
weekend ever. Uh. They had a sixty year over year
increase in sales compared to last year, which you don't
need to have a degree in business and marketing to
know that. That is a lot. That is a lot.
And it's interesting to read the trend stories about Etsy
(03:44):
around this time every year because every single year the
lead is like, holy goodness, Etsy is selling even more
stuff than they did last year. The percent increases are ridiculous,
and the website enjoys forty two million unique visitors per
month going to more than eight hundred thousand shops filled
(04:06):
with fifteen million products. I know that when I go
on Etsy, just as like a casual browser. You know,
if I'm not specifically looking for something. It can be overwhelming.
There is so much stuff on there and you kind
of have to weed through a lot too. Yeah, And
for people out there who are really invested in crafting
and handmade, don't worry. We aren't just going to talk
(04:28):
about Etsy. But I feel like etc. Is such a
household name and one of the reasons, big reasons I
would say, for crafting kind of re entering the mainstream
in the past five ten years. And the incredible thing
about Etsy is how quickly it has picked up speed
(04:50):
because as a website, it turned profitable in two thousand
nine and it only been live at that point for
a less than four years, which, if you know anything
about digital marketing, turning a profit that quickly is pretty good.
And by two thousand twelve, it was generating almost nine
hundred million dollars in sales alone, Yeah, which is pretty
(05:14):
darn impressive that that many people are spending that much
money on handmade or mostly handmade goods. Etsy itself charges
about twenty cents for every item listed and makes about
three point five percent of every sale. And that said,
though a minority of sellers are full time et s
(05:34):
prenewers um I actually know of a woman here in
Atlanta who started a business on Etsy a few years back,
just making really cute handmade labels for things like preserve
jars and labels. Now she has a lot of things
for um, like wedding place cards and things like that,
(05:56):
and now she does the still on the side of
her full time job. But Caroline, she's making probably twenty
five th extra dollars a year. Whoa, whoa. That is
so much more money. It's incredible that that is incredible,
And I mean that's also so much more money than
just your average as a seller makes. That's true. Yeah,
she's definitely at the top of her game in terms
(06:19):
of that, because the average seller is making under four
thousand dollars a year actually, right, so basically just enough
to notice the difference in your income and be able
to pay for things, but not enough to quit your
day job basically. But nevertheless, even though people and and
it's largely women, aren't making enough to just retire on
(06:41):
and as at the retirement fund um, it's still a
new kind of industry, right. It's this thing. It's part
of a growing micro business economy basically, and a lot
of people talk about how the government fails to capture
a lot of these sellers in that exists in these
and formal economies are kind of falling through the cracks
(07:02):
because if you think about it in terms of like
the larger economy, we're in an interesting time now. We're
kind of coming out of the recession and everything, but
we still have middle class issues. We still have issues
of the disappearing middle class and people not being able
to find work. And so the majority of Etsy sellers
are combining, actually combining multiple sources of income. Only twenty
(07:26):
have full time jobs outside of Etsy. And one feature
of Etsy that is really appealing to women, in particularly moms,
is that the child care issues with an Etsy job
or obviously as about as flexible as you can get
because you are oftentimes working in your home or as
(07:47):
some women will describe how you know, after the kids
will go to bed, then they can start sewing, working
on their projects. And I mean, I think it it's
clear from what we're talking about that it Etsy businesses
are are serious business for a lot of people. Etsy
did a survey looking at I think more than like
five thousand of their sellers and found that se sellers
(08:09):
say their shops are their businesses, and nine of those
want to grow their sales, but only to something that
they themselves can manage. So the bulk of people on Etsy,
I would venture to say, are not trying to create
some mega corporation from their sewing or their stuffed animals
or whatever, you know, things like that. They they still
(08:30):
want to be considered a small time crafter, but that
extra income, especially in this economy, can make a huge
difference for a lot of people. But more broadly speaking,
some people point to Etsy as a sign of a
craft revival that we're in. UM. Chris Anderson, who is
the founding editor of Wired magazine, called it the maker
(08:54):
movement UM and other people have given it other terms.
Your your crafters, you're makers, your handmade artisans, whatever you
want to call it. There is certainly a resurgence in
people making things, maybe more slowly and by hand and
in smaller numbers. And so this actually kind of harkens
(09:16):
back to an interview that you fair listeners might have
listened to previously that we did with Emily Matcher, who's
the author of Homeward Bound, and she's a big part
of this, you know, quote unquote new domesticity movement. Yeah,
she focuses a lot on all of the various kinds
of crafts that people are doing and how that even
extends into people are doing homesteading and having backyard chicken
(09:39):
coops and all of how all of those different things intersect.
But when we look at this craft aspect, it's interesting
to see how it started, because it did not start
with Etsy, as I'm sure a lot of listeners know
and are waiting for us to hopefully say, no, it
did not start with Etsy. Um. In the book, which
(10:01):
is also a documentary Handmade Nation by Faith Levine and
Courtney him Roule, they have a delightful timeline of what
they call the New Wave of Craft, and they begin
their timeline in n and it really starts out this
new wave of craft as they call it, in sort
(10:22):
of a Riot Girl type of fashion, with a lot
of things happening in the Portland's, Seattle Olympia, Washington area,
and it's a lot of women initiated alternative crafting communities
and zines that start popping up. Yeah, and this should
sound familiar too if you listen to our Riot Girl
episode in which we talked about zines and d I
(10:43):
y and punk music and all of those things. People
making their own clothes, making their own publications, all all
of that stuff. And so this is kind of happening
around that same time. So in the period nine nine
we have some developments in this movement by Olympia dot
Com goes live, a glitter Boards, an alternative crafting community
goes live. You have get Crafty dot com which goes live.
(11:05):
It's put out there by Gene Rayla. Uh. And then
young Blood here in Atlanta opens which is pretty awesome
store if I do say so myself. Yeah, and uh
for fans of Bust magazine, that's when it's She's Crafty
column starts up. And from there, once we enter into
the two thousands, things start to move from just communities
(11:27):
and groups to actually having more brick and mortar establishments,
kind of like Young Blood here in Atlanta. Uh. You
have things like Needles and Pens opening up in San Francisco,
Coggan Pearl opening up in uh New York. You have
I Heart Rummage in Seattle, and then you have more
websites start to pop up, one of which is not
(11:48):
Martha dot org. Because remember this is also during the
heyday of Martha Stewart who helped fuel some of this
d I Y ethos. But this is not exactly the
Martha Stewart tie type of crafting. Yeah, I would say
they're more parallel. They're not exactly interring. I mean they
are intersecting. But I would venture to say that maybe
(12:09):
the people who are reading Martha's magazines and watching her
TV shows are taking a different route than the women
who are participating in this sort of craft revival movement. Yeah.
I think of it more as like the punk rock
Martha Stewart. So yeah, as we move forward, it and
(12:35):
this movement starts to get bigger and bigger and attract
more people who are just like super intenitting. We get
things like the Austin Craft Mafia UM and a bunch
of other communities popping up in in different cities across
the country. And then you get fairs and festivals. Um,
you get the Ladies Independent Design League starting in New
York City in the mid two thousands, and just bigger
(12:59):
craft fairs and try auctions continue to pop up. Yeah,
and you also have specialty magazines like Ready Made and
Craft Magazine launching And then yes, we must circle back
again to Etsy, which goes live in two thousand six.
And the story of how Etsy is born is interesting
(13:19):
because it starts out with this guy named Robert kalin
who was originally brought in by Gene raally A to
redesign her site, get crafty dot com. And she had
found the site she'd been going for a while and
he came in and he had kind of been like
doing other things and was kind of trying to find
(13:39):
his way in the business world, figure out what he
wanted to do, and he really gravitated toward this radical
crafting ethos and all of these festivals and fairs that
were happening as well, and a light bulb went off
in his head, saying, you know what, what if we
developed a business model around all of these individual sellers
(14:06):
tables that I see at all these festivals. Yeah, And
there was a New York Times article talking about this
movement and mentioning Robert Kalen, and it doesn't paint him,
I think, in the most favorable light, but it is
interesting to read because you know, if you just say, like, oh,
this guy came in to redesign this lady's craft website
(14:26):
and he got the idea to make money. It's it's
actually much more than that. He was a philosophy student.
You know. He spoke at length to the New York
Times reporter about the handmade philosophy. He said, it's not
a fat ats a resurgence, and so it was more
than just a guy wanting to make money off of
a trend that was built largely on the hands and
(14:47):
knitting needles of women. Um, he really found himself fighting
against the big box store mentality in our country. Yeah.
I mean, there was definitely a very re real idealism
that was going into the founding of Etsy, and it
took off pretty quickly because by late two thousand seven
(15:08):
it had seventy thousand sellers, nine percent of whom were women,
and on July twenty nine, two thousand nine, it achieved
its one millionth sale. Right. So, as Etsy is building
its following and getting more and more sellers on their
selling their amazing creative weares it's still part of a subculture.
(15:29):
It's still not taking over the market, and it's still
not infiltrating the general online shopping consciousness, you could say. Um.
And during this time, Faith Levine, who we mentioned at
the top of the podcast, she's the author of Handmade
Nation and also made the documentary about this community. She's
taking notice and she really wanted to document what was
(15:51):
going on. Yeah, and so she traveled around the country
interviewing crafters, makers, artisans about their process, their philosophy, um,
their experience being someone who's in this handmade world. And
she really wanted to make that documentary Handmade Nation, she says,
(16:11):
because she could sense that the crafting tide was swelling
and she wanted to do this herself and make this
documentary in the right way. Before, as she told it,
there would be some kind of reality show about cute
girls crafting that would just ruin the whole thing. Can
(16:31):
you imagine. I can't imagine. I can't imagine. I can
totally imagine. Um. Yeah, she has an interesting quote. She said,
I believe the simple act of making something, anything with
your hands is quite a political ripple in a world
dominated by mass production, and people choosing to make something
will turn these small ripples into waves. And I mean
she should know. She went from just crafting zines and
(16:54):
sock monkeys in her apartment to churning out a ton
of products in eating stuffed owls, which are a thing
now quite a thing, quite a thing. Uh. And and
that was back in two thousand two that she was
selling a ton of her stuff online. But again echoing
that Riot Girl podcast, her description in a profile in
(17:15):
The New York Times in two thousand nine was a
quote sometimes artist who made punk rock magazines. So clearly
we've got that hardcore d I Y undercurrent. And in
those interviews with those crafters and Handmade Nation, there are
these themes that constantly come up of wanting to be
(17:36):
anti industrial, anti institutional, anti consumerists, and also this appeal
of being highly entrepreneurial. And so you really see this
intersection of politics with these handmade goods. And in this
PBS article about Handmade Nation, because it got a lot
(17:57):
of press at the time, it described how quilts are
cutting edge outlets for self expression and samplers carry messages
of anti consumerism, environmentalism, and feminism. It's interesting. I mean,
now you know we're coming. I feel like this is
a conversation that we've had, you know, obviously on different
topics in the podcast before, about things that are considered
(18:20):
feminine being reclaimed, and you know, it's part of this
this quote unquote new domesticity, a term itself which doesn't
necessarily sit well with everyone, but more of just that
political movement towards Okay, well, quilting is such a woman thing,
but I'm going to do it, and it's going to
be radical because you know, it's it's part of a
new upsurge of creativity, of creation. Yeah, and there are
(18:44):
even crafters out there who specifically make hand goods, not
so much for the utility or for home decor or
whatever you want it to be, but actually to make
a direct political statement. So you might have people like
arn't bombers out there who are going and wrapping up
different things out in structures, out in parks or um,
(19:08):
just like out in public spaces um. And and there's
a term for this, it's called craftivism, which I believe
was coined by Betsy Greer, who was the author of
Knitting for Good. And there are all of these groups
as well who are into craftivism. And it's not just
yarn bombing, but there is a lot of knitting involved. Yeah.
(19:30):
And these groups include, uh, people like the Anarchist Knitting Circle,
the Revolutionary Knitting Circle, and micro Revolt. And it's funny
we Christen and I read the study that talked about
this whole craftivist movement and the gender aspects of it
and how this is not Martha's crafting. You know, you're
you're taking something like you know, knitting, which happens in
(19:52):
the home and it's traditionally like your grandmother doing it,
but you're pairing it with these quote unquote masculine ideas
about revolution and un revolt and anarchy and like knitting
death matches, things that are very competitive and outside the home,
and just kind of mixing up those stereotypes. Yeah, and
(20:12):
just the very act of taking that domestic work into
the public sphere where it's completely unavoidable. You can't not
look at a giant tree that was in Atlanta on
a on a main thoroughfare that had been nit bombed.
And this also, though, two points to the massive spectrum
(20:33):
of Etsy and crafting in general. From this, you know,
the anarchist knitting circle all the way down to the
person who is just making a few extra bucks selling
some thrifted clothes or handmade stationary, whatever it might be.
It's kind of fascinating to see how all of these
different people are being united knit together. If you will
(20:57):
through this movement. Yeah, well, I mean certainly, though not
everyone is excited about it. You know, we spoke about
the Martha audience, and I certainly don't want to put
any Martha fans down out there at all. But in
speaking to The New York Times, Andrew Wagner, the editor
of American Craft magazine, said that older generations of crafters
(21:18):
didn't really take a shine to this new trend. Basically,
he said, the old guard was saying, it took me
twenty years to master my craft, and these kids think
they can just start by stitching owls. And I see,
I see where that attitude would come from. Because if
you're making a quilt because you're an expert quilter, and
whether you want to make money or whether you're just
making it for your grandkids, you might be like, what
(21:40):
are these kids doing, you know, making stuffed birds? But
you know, to that, I say, like, if somebody wants
to freaking stitch a stuffed animal, let them. Yeah. And
the thing is, Wagner was going on to talk about
how they have retooled. That's kind of a pun American
Craft Magazine to bridge those two worlds, because as the
(22:00):
thing about it is those craft people of your share
a lot of the same ideologies as these radical crafters today.
Because there was something called the arts and crafts movement
that happened first in the United States at the turn
(22:20):
of the century, and then there was a revival in
the sixties and seventies. And it's those those baby boomers
of the sixties and seventies who took parton that revival
who might look askance at what's going on today and
say that it's not legit. But those arts and crafts
movements were still fueled by the same reactions against mass production,
(22:42):
industrialization and things like that. Yeah, it's very cyclical. I mean,
our older generations, I would hope can see that, you know,
people our age participating in crafting and things like that
are just part of the same cycle that they themselves
were on. Um. The movement in the sixties and seventies
emerged thanks to Princeton professor Robert Judson Clark, who in
(23:04):
nineteen seventy two directed an exhibition about the American Arts
and Crafts movement from eighteen seventy six to nineteen sixteen. So,
I mean it goes back and back and back and
back that these arts and crafts cycles have popped up. Yeah,
And and the first arts and crafts movement actually started
in England during the late Victorian period and was promoted
(23:25):
by theorists and art critic John Ruskin. And then it
travels across the Atlantic to the United States, where it
actually is renamed I should have said, the studio craft movement.
And this was happening in seven that's when the first
Society of Arts and Crafts emerged in Boston. But you
have them popping up and all of the largest urban
(23:47):
centers in the US. Yeah, and it really arose kind
of as all of these as all of these ups
and downs in the arts and crafts movement do it
really arose as a critique of industrial labor um. They
were fighting against lowered standards for design that they said
had been debased by mechanization. They wanted to elevate the
(24:08):
designer as craftsmen um. And so in these urban centers
in America you have men really leading the movement. But
there were a lot of training centers established to teach
women certain skills, especially immigrant young women um, such as
Boston's Sunday Evening Girls Club, which was established in as
just a reading group for immigrant girls. But right there
(24:31):
at the turn of the century, they founded the very
American named Paul Revere Pottery, offering the girls in the
group a chance to earn money. Yeah, and and pottery
was often taught to women, along with metalwork, textiles, and
jewelry making. So these are really interesting skills. And to
think about that happening in the late eighteen hundreds, early
(24:52):
nineteen hundreds is pretty fascinating, you know, just because of
how you still see similar kinds of things happening today.
Direct outreach of teaching people, maybe in lower income communities,
how to make handmade goods that they can then sell
and create supplementary income. Um. And from there, though, you
(25:14):
do have it trickling into more mainstream outlets. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art noted how in the early twentieth century
you have magazines like House Beautiful and Ladies Home Journal
that really took these ideas of elevating design and craft
in the home and interiors and popularizing them. I love
(25:37):
House Beautiful, Yeah, I mean, it's almost too aspirational for
me at this point. Um, But it is fascinating to
think of a magazine like Ladies Home Journal a house
beautiful in the hands of maybe an upper middle class
woman at the time who unbeknownst to her is reading
about things that were really seeded by a lot of
(26:00):
radical socialists. Yeah, and I think, I mean, the socialist
roots were definitely stronger in England during the rise of
their arts and crafts movement. In America, those socialist tendencies
were pretty much limited to the big urban center societies,
not so much like your your rural Deerfield, Massachusetts societies
(26:23):
for aults and crafts. Yeah. And it was in the
sixties and the seventies with that Princeton professor that you mentioned, Caroline,
where he really uncovered this past movement and the mostly
male designers of note from the time, and so you
have that resurgence and no big surprise that it would
happen at that time during so much social upheaval in
(26:46):
general and so many reactions against massive institutions. Yeah. But
I mean, it's it's interesting that a lot of these
crafting movements kind of circle around activities that are so
often considered a like a home sphere, a woman's sphere
activity kind of well, in speaking of which, that's something
(27:08):
that you see especially happening in the seventies because you're
now in second wave feminism, and so you see a
similar reclamation of women's work in artistic movements. Um. And
this is going back to to that paper we mentioned
called Fabricating Activism, craft Work, Popular Culture, and Gender by
(27:31):
Zach z Braditch and Heidi M. Brush Um, which talks
about craftivism, yes, but also how this gender play so
much into craft work and fabric culture. And in it
they talk about how sewing circles, quilting groups and the
like were organizing bodies of first wave feminism. And so
(27:53):
then in the seventies, with second wave feminism, you see
a return to those formerly derided crass because oh, it's
just women's work. They're just doing that in the home right.
And it is those uh, basically those women's work activities
that are decried as they're they're not high art. They're
just making a quilt because they need a quilt. It's
(28:15):
there's no fine art about it. And you have Lucy
Lippard who in three wood an essay called Household Images
in Art in which she says that during the Women's movement,
women had the confidence to begin quote shedding their shackles
proudly untying the apron strings and in some cases keeping
the apron on, flaunting it and turning it into art. Yeah,
(28:39):
and today you still see those undercurrents of female empowerment,
whether it's something as simple as the stay at home
mom who is stitching up her etc. Wares to make
extra income after the kids go to sleep, or the
full time d I y revolutionary who is literally trying
to change the world via crafting and craftis um. Yeah.
(29:02):
Gene Reala, the founder of Get Crafty, who we mentioned earlier,
echoes this whole sentiment. She talked to The New York
Times in two thousand and seven and said, I really
came to it from more of an indie rock to
it yourself kind of political place, sort of married with
making peace with feminism, And that echoes those second way
feminists back in the seventies like Miriam Shapiro, who said
(29:23):
I wanted to validate the traditional activities of women, to
connect myself to the unknown women artists who had made quilts,
who had done the invisible women's work of civilization. So
in that regard, crafting is really freaking politically significant. Yeah,
and it's more, it gets even more interesting today too,
(29:44):
when we see how more men are being brought into
this so called women's work, we have gender divide slowly
being brought down. Just in terms of Etsy, for instance,
twelve percent of the sellers are men, and there was
a two thousand and eight post on the Etsy blog
(30:04):
interviewing male sellers, one of whom says that he often
surprises people when he talks about his sewing and knitting.
And there is still admittedly a gender divide in terms
of quote unquote manly craft like woodwork, leather work, and metallurgy. UM.
I also have a couple of guy friends who are
really into screen printing, UM, both hobby and making their income. UM.
(30:28):
And Harry Sawyers, who's an associate editor at Popular Mechanics
magazine he helped compile the new book man Craft, said
that crafts and men definitely go together. It showcases rough
hewn skills like leather tooling and ax whittling well. And
I'm sure that those guys out there who are doing
woodworking or knitting or screen printing, whatever it is, share
(30:50):
the same enjoyment of making something on their own, being creative,
being artistic, and taking time outside and away. For UM.
This fast moving, tech fueled, mobile, digital, you know, just
all consuming seven kind of pace that we're now living in.
(31:12):
And there was this inc story that we read about
this whole Etsy trend and basically like what is going
to happen to Etsy down the road with its under
its new CEO, Chad Dickerson, And it interviewed this guy
who had been working in a great, you know, great
office job, stable, making good money, but he was just
he felt so disconnected from the world at large and
(31:34):
wasn't able to be the kind of creative person that
he wanted to be. So he ended up starting to
make leather goods like bags and stuff, and um, he
started to feel really fulfilled and it took off and
he was selling a bajillion bags and finally he was like,
I can't even stay on Etsy anymore because I followed
my true passion and I'm making these bags and I
(31:56):
get to be creative, but there's no way that I
can keep up with consumer demand for my stuff and
still stay quote unquote handmade on Etsy. Well, didn't you
mention at the top of the podcast with that etc.
Survey how a lot of people want to keep their
stores to a manageable size, which you can't make a
(32:17):
ton of things if you are one person. Um, and
you have a lot of people, especially this time of
year where they are working seven speaking of a seven environment,
but working all hours just to meet the holiday demand
because so many people do want handmade. Now it's actually
taxing the people who are making all of these goods.
(32:41):
And so that is a big question though for crafting,
and especially with its intersection with Etsy and how big
Etsy has become. It's people wondering whether or not that
original ethos of small and environmentally conscious and anti consumerist,
whether those philosophies have just been watered down the larger
(33:02):
that the business itself has gotten. Yeah, a lot of
people are none too pleased with the direction they see
Etsy going because CEO Robert Kalin was removed by the
board recently and so Chad Dickerson took over, and it's
Etsy has really flourished under him, depending on what your
(33:23):
definition of flourishes. I mean, Um, there's a lot more
sellers making a lot more money. And Dickerson really had
to wrestle with the idea of how do you make
more money as a website as a business when your
sellers your most successful sellers grow and then are forced
off the website, like that guy who who made bags
(33:44):
and you know, leather goods and stuff like, once you
hit a certain point on Etsy, you have to go elsewhere.
And so there they are trying to find a way
to keep more of their successful sellers, so you know,
they can keep some of those dollars in how than,
so a lot of people are calling Etsy like Etsy
Bay now saying it's getting too big, and so they're
(34:06):
wrestling now with calling the idea of calling people designers,
letting them be designers, so you're you don't have to
be a maker necessarily, you can call yourself a designer,
but outsourced the production to an actual manufacturer, to which
some would say, oh, well, why am I going on
Etsy to buy something that might ultimately be made in
(34:27):
a sweatshop, even if it's designed by someone in their home.
So I mean, yeah, it's going to be interesting to
see the direction that it takes um and also the
fact that the ets style, that kind of vintagy, kitchy,
crafty look and aesthetic is something that you're seeing more
(34:48):
and more in any story you walk into any kind
of urban outfitters forever twenty one. I mean they they
even what sc even has a direct partnership now with
west Elm, which is owned by WILLIAMS Sonoma. Yeah. I
uh well, first of all, I love getting West Elm catalogs,
and not that I can afford a single freaking thing
in there, but uh yeah, they do. They feature Etsy
(35:11):
made creations throughout their catalog. You know, they'll have a
living room set up, but they'll have art on the
walls or a vase on the table, and they'll have
a little blurb about the the artist. And for someone
who wants to make it a full time business, then
that's probably great. But then again, you just wonder where
is there going to be a moment of divergence again
(35:31):
between the business path and we're consumerist path and that
philosophical path, which makes me wonder if in twenty years,
fifty years, if we'll be going through yet another craft revival. Yeah,
and it should also be interesting to see kind of
where this this micro business economy goes, because the bulk
(35:53):
of sellers on at Sea, for instance, are women, and
so what was the statu was something like triple number
of women owned businesses documented by the U S Census.
You know that those are the et SE numbers. They're
sitting their own hours, they're not having to worry about childcare.
And but if we're not documenting them well enough and
they're not having a social safety net like health insurance,
(36:14):
I don't know. It should be interesting to see where
these micro businesses, especially the women owned businesses, because they
seem to be behind the bulk of them, where they
will end up, Whether it will go in the direction
of being a solid supplementary income that women can rely on,
especially you know, think about single moms or just women
in general who might need some extra cash. Um, it's
(36:37):
becoming a new asset, a new answer with that giant
question mark that comes with working versus or plus motherhood
or whether or not it's just going to become so
large that those opportunities will gradually fade away. So I'll
send it on an up note though, since it's the holidays,
(36:59):
support handmade local goods. Yeah, I I for one, I'm
gonna visit Young Blood Boutique very soon to look for
a present for my boyfriend's mother, because you know, I mean,
it's always it just always looks more thoughtful and it
is more thoughtful. I feel like to take time and
and look through handmade crafted things. Absolutely, and one of
(37:20):
my favorite things to do. Um, sorry if you're one
of the million people that I've given this too, but
one of my favorite things to do for presence is
go around to some of the local boutiques in Atlanta
and get family members local stuff, whether it's locally made
jams or locally made jewelry. I think that that feels
more personalized and thoughtful than going to Target. Yeah, yeah,
(37:42):
all the nothing against Target. Hey, I shop there all
the time. So I hope that there are some crafters,
some makers, some artisans listening. We want to hear from you.
What do you think about the work that you're doing.
Do you feel compelled by any kind to political philosophy
or you're just doing it to make a buck? Um?
(38:03):
Have you thought much about this Etsy conundrum? Let us
know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is
where you can write us, and you can also tweet
us a mom Stuff podcast or message us on Facebook.
And we've got a couple of messages to share with
you when we come right back from a quick break
(38:32):
and now back to our letters, and we've got a
couple of letters here from our two part series that
we did on rape and sexual assault in the United States,
and this one is from Joseph and the subject line
is men's role in stopping rape. He writes, this has
been a very important subject to me as my wife
(38:54):
is a victim of rape and sexual assault. When hearing
these stories from her, I couldn't help but get angry
and encourage her to report the incidents to the police.
She did not, unfortunately, because she did not believe that
there was enough evidence for anything to be done. They
had occurred a while back before we met, and the
perpetrator was someone she knew well. Feeling a bit helpless,
I turned to the Internet for more information on how
(39:14):
to get involved in stopping sexual violence and increasing the
rate of reporting, and my searches I learned more and
more about rape culture and the social constructs around it.
Over time, I've come to notice, even in the effort
of understanding and stopping rape, the concentration is much more
on who gets raped and not on who commits rape.
Even the vocabulary concentrates on female victims of rape and
(39:36):
not sexual violence against women. After watching an amazing ted
talk from Jackson Cat's PhD I came to the belief
that we should be talking more about men's sexual violence.
It has to be recognized that this is not a
woman's issue primarily, but instead it is first a men's issue.
Why our men's are sexually violent and how do we
(39:56):
get men to be less violent are much more important
questions than I if so many women get raped? And
how do we stop women from getting raped? To end
this on a positive note, I have found that I'm
by no means the only guy out there trying to
change my way of thinking and that of my peers.
A Good Men Project and Men Can Stop Rape are
just a couple of organizations devoted to giving men guidance
(40:17):
on engaging other men in these topics and encouraging education
about consent. I hope you can at least mention our
two groups on the podcast, since I'm sure you have
plenty of male and female listeners who want to get involved.
Love the podcast, and thank you for having the courage
to speak openly and raise awareness. So thank you, Joseph.
I have a letter here from Evan. She is a
(40:37):
sophomore in high school. She says, I really want to
thank you for your sexual assault series. From these past
few weeks. It's an issue that's really close to my
heart and that seems to be horribly misrepresented in general.
High school is infamous with the constant stories about people
being sent home for wearing leggings to school and whatnot.
I do have good news though. This past year, I've
noticed my school really taking initiative to bring rape culture
(40:59):
and especially slut shaming, out of the dark. I'm a
columnist on my school paper, and last year we ran
a column about Todd Aiken's musings in our first issue.
This year, in September, we covered the Chicago slut Walk
on the front page, and my slut shaming column was
in that issue as well. The reaction was overwhelming, particularly
this year. We received a ridiculous number of letters from
people who have experienced slut shaming, as well as boys
(41:21):
telling us it got them thinking. The goal of a
columnist is always to start a conversation, and so I'm
thankful to be in an educational environment that's accepting of
these discussions. I guess I just wanted to share a
positive experience regarding rape culture in the educational environment because
we hear so much about schools being unsupportive. Thanks again
for being so great, and thank you for being so great,
Evan and participating in a very important discussion. Yeah, and
(41:44):
hey becoming a student journalist, Thank you and me cool,
and thanks to everybody who has written in Mom's Stuff
at Discovery dot com is where you can send us
your letters. You can also follow us on Twitter at
mom Stuff Podcast. You can find us on Facebook. You
can follow us on Tumbler at stuff mom Never Told
You dot tumbler dot com, as well as on Instagram
(42:05):
at stuff Mom Never Told You, And of course you
can also check us out on YouTube. It's YouTube dot
com slash stuff Mom Never Told You And don't forget
folks to subscribe for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com
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