When Did Handmade Stop Being Good Enough?

I have been thinking about perfection lately. More specifically, I've been thinking about what we're comparing ourselves to when we decide that something we've made isn't good enough.

Miniatures have always required precision. When you're working at one-twelfth scale, a tiny discrepancy can suddenly look enormous. A cut that's slightly off can leave a noticeable gap. Two pieces that aren't quite the same length suddenly look very different when they're sitting beside one another. But there's a difference between the precision produced by a pair of human hands and the precision produced by a machine, and I'm not sure we're always allowing ourselves to see that difference anymore.

Spend enough time looking at miniatures online and you'll see some extraordinary work. Perfectly matched architectural details, elaborate furniture, intricate moldings and decorative elements repeated with absolute consistency. Some of the makers producing this work have enormous audiences, and understandably so. The finished rooms can be remarkable.

What isn't always obvious in the finished photograph is how those things were made.

Laser cutters and 3D printers have changed what is possible in miniatures. A piece can be designed digitally and reproduced with a level of precision that would be extraordinarily difficult to achieve by hand. Identical components can be produced again and again. Complicated architectural details that might once have taken hours to carve or construct can be created with remarkable accuracy. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that. In fact, I'm amazed by what some miniature artists are able to create with these tools. There is tremendous skill behind understanding the technology, designing something digitally and figuring out how to turn an idea into a physical object. That's a form of craftsmanship in its own right.

I should probably acknowledge that I use manufactured miniatures all the time. I buy furniture, lighting, architectural components and accessories, and I have no intention of stopping. I don't believe everything in a miniature house needs to be made by hand for the finished work to have value.

What concerns me isn't whether we use things made by machines. It's whether we've begun expecting the things made by hand to look as though they weren't. Machine precision is becoming the visual standard against which handmade work is judged.

Those two things may appear beside each other on the same Instagram feed, but they aren't the same process. One person may have designed a staircase digitally and cut its components with a laser. Another may be standing at a workbench with a piece of wood, a saw, a ruler and sandpaper, trying to make twelve tiny pieces fit together. The first staircase may be absolutely perfect. Every spindle identical. Every cut exact. The second might have a joint that's a fraction off. And somewhere along the way, I think we've begun looking at that tiny imperfection and assuming the second maker simply isn't as good.

When machine precision becomes the litmus test against which handmade craftsmanship is measured, I think we've lost something.

I work with older miniature houses and furniture all the time, and they have given me a very different reference point for what good craftsmanship looks like. I see hand-cut wood and tiny variations in trim. I see furniture where two pieces aren't absolutely identical. I see the occasional tool mark and joints that reveal how something was assembled. Sometimes I can actually work out the sequence in which a maker built something simply by looking closely at it. And some of that work is exceptional.Not perfect......exceptional. There is a distinction.

This isn't an argument that something deserves to be called good craftsmanship simply because it was made by hand. I've seen plenty of poorly executed handmade work, and I've certainly made things myself that needed to be taken apart and done again. I care about getting things right. I measure, sand, adjust and fuss over tiny details more than I'd probably like to admit. And sometimes I let a piece remain imperfect because, no matter how much I work at it, I simply can't fix the thing I can see is off.

Craftsmanship matters to me. But craftsmanship and mechanical perfection aren't the same thing.

The more older miniatures I handle, the more aware I become of the evidence left behind by the people who made them. Lately, I've been turning over pieces of furniture and finding signatures. I'm researching a bungalow designed by Pat and Noel Thomas decades ago, working from their original workshop materials and handwritten instructions. I own houses built by people whose names I'm still trying to uncover. Those objects don't interest me despite the evidence that human hands made them. That evidence is part of what interests me.

I wonder what happens if we begin expecting handmade work to look as though it wasn't made by hand at all.

For someone just beginning in miniatures, I think that expectation can be particularly discouraging. Imagine cutting your first pieces of wood, struggling with a miter box, trying to make two tiny corners meet, and then opening your phone to see a miniature room where every architectural element appears flawless. It's very easy to conclude that you're simply not good enough. But if those elements were produced by a machine capable of making the same exact cut repeatedly, you're comparing two entirely different methods of making something. That doesn't diminish the digitally produced piece. It just means it shouldn't diminish yours either.

If beginners believe handmade work should look machine-perfect, they may give up before their hands ever have the chance to learn the craft.

Skills survive because people practice them. Someone has to make the imperfect first cut before they can make the better one. They have to learn how wood behaves, how much material sanding will remove, how to correct a joint that's slightly off and when something really does need to be started again. Eventually their hands begin to understand things that were difficult in the beginning. That's craftsmanship too.

Maybe this is why I find myself increasingly interested in the people who made the older things that come into my workshop. I'm not only interested in preserving the object. I want to understand how it was made and, when I can, who made it. The tools available to miniature makers will continue to change, and I think that's a good thing. There is room in this art form for new technology and new ways of creating. I admire the people who are pushing those possibilities forward.

But moving the craft forward doesn't require leaving its traditional skills behind. I hope there will always be room for the person standing at a workbench with a piece of wood and a saw, trying to make something tiny with their own hands. I don't want handmade miniatures to survive simply because they're charming reminders of the way things used to be made. I want people to keep making them.

I simply hope that as we become better at making things with machines, we don't forget how to make them with our hands.