I just finished creating my first Etsy treasury list, From the Cave. It is a list of primitive or at least primitive looking objects. My favorite author in his book The Everlasting Man speaks of what we actually know about primitive man. We have not found piles of cracked wives skulls, but we have found drawings and sculptures. Right from our earliest origins humanity has had a desire to express itself in non-practical ways. The knife is a practical tool, a shiny stone wove into the pummel leather is not practical. A mug is practical, designs and images on the outside do nothing to increase it's ability to hold beer, but they are desired to be part of it just the same.
This is one of the greatest things that separates us from animals. A monkey may pick up a stick and use it as a tool to pick bugs out of bark, but when he is full he will never then take that stick, wrap it in copper and set stones in it.
And so right from our beginnings in the cave we desired to surround ourselves with things of beauty. This became true of every object we used. Fire was put into fireplaces and into pipes, protection and clothing soon had designs in it, food and drink were stored in ornate jars, at least until mass production came along and realized how much cheaper and easier it is to make drab items.
"cheap" and "easy" are relative. Cheap only exists in a capitalistic economy, and easy is easily refuted. It's easy only at each individual step, but when you include all the people hours and transportation involved in each object individually, you realize that it is actually way more work and "costs" more (in something other than greenbacks) to make cheap crap in china and send it to Montana then to have a guy in Montana make a superior product
ReplyDeleteyour collection inspired me to make one on etsy, of rings my mother would like: http://tinyurl.com/84g9r75
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