
Handmade With Love…..
It has been a few weeks, since I last updated you on what’s keeping us busy at Rustic Motifs….well we are currently at the production stage and hope to be ready with our first collection by early April.
Yes I know you might be wondering, that we have been around and we are yet to show you our products and all that we talk about at Rustic Motifs 🙂
But that is the thing about handmade products, it needs time, it needs passion
and it needs its creators to share a bit of themselves in every piece they create.
You may ask what is so special about handmade products….it serves the same purpose as its machine made counterpart and yet costs more. My answer to that is, it’s all about how you see it and it is all in your perception.
Everyone has their own definition for handmade, some say its unfinished and rustic, some say its unique made with a lot of love and care, some see it as adding that personal touch.
At Rustic Motifs we see handmade products as a way to create rural employment, as a means to empower the women folk in the deepest corners of our country, as a channel to ensure our age old traditions and ancient art forms continue to find patrons and even our future generations get to see and experience it.
We love the fact, that it takes longer to make something by hand than it does by machine, because that ensures that the beauty and essence of each piece is unmatched.
Handmade products remind us of all the laughter and stories shared while they were put together. Every motif, every thread, every stroke, every weave speaks of ancient folklores, beliefs and traditions that inspired its creators.
We love the fact that the materials used are organic and locally sourced be it the grass from the riverbanks or vegetable dyes, because it ensures that we leave fewer carbon footprints on the sands of time.
Madhubani artist, Ashok Kumar Das is a national awardee from Madhubani, a village in central India famous for its paintings. I met Ashok recently at an exhibition and he had this to say, “ I can never commercialize my art, the day I do that, I will lose my inspiration and my skill. More than money we seek people who would appreciate the effort we put in, the amount of work that goes into making each painting is immense since everything used is organically sourced and processed. The days we remember are not the days we sell more, but the days we meet customers who see the sweat behind our creations.”
Unfortunately, artisans like Ashok can count such days on their fingertips, because these are far and few….
It is quite sad to see, that despite being a country where ‘maa ke haath ka khana’ beats any 7* restaurant spread, where we still believe that all things handmade from greeting cards to pickles to Diwali sweets speak of love and warmth and where handicraft is the second largest occupation after agriculture, handmade goods and their creators don’t get the kind of respect and recognition they truly deserve.
Most of us including me, we don’t mind going to a mall and shelling out thousands for branded products without so much as a squeak, but then we go to a local potter or a crafts mela by rural artisans and we can’t stop ourselves from polishing our bargaining skills and wrestling out a deal even if it is just for a few rupees.
Am I complaining, maybe or maybe not; I understand why we behave the way we do. It is all about creating that brand experience, about ensuring that the value asked for is the value a product truly deserves. This is what we intend to do at Rustic Motifs, provide our artisans with a platform where they can find the right value for their creations, create the right brand experience for our customers and eventually reach out to people who will appreciate the effort of these artisans and the uniqueness of their craft.
At Rustic Motifs it is our mission to bring that shift in perception, so that the next time you see a handmade product you realize that no matter how much one may try…the closest they will get is an imitation of the original, the original will still be unique with its own tales to tell…..
Post By Merlin Francis