On the Power of Handmade Objects

Maryanne linked me to a letter she sent into the Boston Globe which was published and can be read here (it's the second one). It was in response to an article entitled The Paper Chase about hand-written correspondence vs. e-cards and their ilk. While I do believe e-communications have their place in the modern world, I also think there's a lot of truth in what the author of this piece says. My mind is tangential, so of course reading Maryanne's letter and The Paper Chase reminded me of other, well, stuff. The following is my two cents regarding, not only on the value hand-lettered documents, but more broadly the unique power of handmade objects.

I stumbled upon this image on tumblr a couple of months ago (unfortunately, the artist wasn’t noted in the post--if any of you know who made it, please let me know), and I fell in love with it for a few reasons.

I really enjoy seeing pieces of artwork that use traditional media in non-traditional ways; I enjoy pieces that manage to pay homage to the past while creating something new and different. I certainly aspire to this in my own work. What I really love about this piece, however, is how unusual and expressive it is, and how suits the subject matter perfectly... like Kerouac's words set to the perfect score.

Great calligraphy, above all other things in my opinion, is exuberant. It breathes life into the words on the page in a way mechanized typefaces simply cannot. Why is this the case? Well, that's a tricky question to answer (but I'm going to take a stab at it anyway).

Ok, I’m going to take a slight digression, but there is method to my madness, I swear. The French philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes wrote an essay called The Grain of the Voice in which he argues that the reason people respond favorably to vocal performances is because they can hear the physicality of the performer, with all the corporeal imperfection that entails. It is this physicality that conveys emotion, that moves us. So, in a sense, it is the very lack of mechanization that allows us to enjoy music. I realize this argument may be flawed: people do, afterall, listen to instrumental (which, however, has its own, less overt type of physicality) and electronic music. Some people don't even care about the emotional content of music. But I do think there is a grain (no pun intended) of truth in Barthes’s argument.

I remember during my time at the North Bennet Street School, Jeff Altepeter (the primary bookbinding teacher) often expressed a distaste for guillotines which give text blocks crisp, regular edges… but also leave little dents in the edge of the book where there are dings in the blade. As a result, the text block looks very much like it was made by a machine—a characteristic which isn’t very desirable in a handbound book. So maybe Barthes notion of the importance of physical presence in performance applies not only to music. Afterall, there’s something magical about hearing the crackle of a vinyl record (which, I would argue, has a physical presence in a way digital music does not), seeing the dance of an artist's arm in a brushstroke, and, indeed, the distinctly human cadence of hand-lettering. These things, with their flaws and occasional rough edges, can move us deeply.

Something about imperfection draws us in. There is beauty in it--perhaps, it reminds us of ourselves. And that is why I believe wholly that the handmade object will never fall wayside to trivial (albeit useful) inventions like the e-vite.