Hand-made: Interior with your own hands

It seems that the fashion for real hand-made is beginning to subside, and along with this a new interior design trend, conventionally called “pseudo-hand-made”, is breaking out. The paradox of the phenomenon is that today’s Internet dwellers are still actively exchanging links to all sorts of designer works that can be copied, but this is no longer cool. While it used to be possible to create a sensation by answering the question “Where did you buy it?” with “I knitted it myself,” now the situation is exactly the opposite. “Tied on needles” watches can cause bewilderment and ridicule at the whims of the artist, who made it, – but surely, upon learning that it is the work of the Italian design studio, the guest will immediately bury all his skepticism. Apparently, the fashion is born from a sense of contradiction – because of the abundance of manual work, which has become wildly popular in recent years, the latest trend is not the manual work itself, but the thing that pretends to be it.

The Division of Labor
The author of any hand-made work (no matter what kind, in this case interior work) is a risky person. Already because he understands that even though highly valued in the buying environment of manual labor, but does not bring the hand-meider itself much profit. Consumables cost a pretty penny; each order takes as much time as a soulless mechanism in the shop would spend to produce a hundred or even thousands of units; as a result, it is not possible to increase the flow of customers. Creative people who simply enjoy creating remain in one group, the owners of small businesses, while the second group consists of people with a commercial vein, future millionaires, who feel the trend of large-scale production and handmade under one roof.

Pseudo-arm work
Why bother working on one lighting fixture when you can make a whole batch of them? But not just any nameless lot, but designed by a particular designer.
A popular trend in the “two thousandths” is to “mimic” hand-made fixtures in the textile niche. The manufacturer convinces the public that the product is exclusive, one-of-a-kind. The public believes and gladly buys pseudo-handmade home accessories. Such as?

The woven mats.
They used to be used to cover the floors. For simple work on the loom, women took multi-colored scraps of rags, a half to two centimeters long, twisted on the spindle and wove a so-called carpet. More often it was striped. A less strict variation was with butterflies or bows. Circular shaped poloviks were crocheted or sewn from scraps. These days, the village tradition has conquered the city dwellers as well.

Rugs made of thin, “napkin” cloth, remotely similar to their counterparts, are somehow similar to the kitchen towels. Striped, embroidered on white monolithic fabric, with folk ornaments, they perform a decorative function. The obscenely low cost is more of a plus. They make a clump and do not warm your feet – that’s more of a minus.

Light fixtures
How can a light fixture be textile and still meet the rules of fire safety? Very simple: at the heart of it is a cold LED bulb, which does not heat the fabric. Soft light fixture – it’s a real godsend for children’s rooms, especially if the family has karapuzy, who just started to walk and are happy to break some mom’s ban. Your child’s fingers will not get hurt when in contact with the night light. Felt, made from sheep’s wool or goat’s down, is a favorite material of children’s designers. It is recommended to take care of eco-lighting like a favorite wool sweater: gentle washing of the woven part in cool water.

If felt products evoke cozy cottage motifs, then the lights made of paper turn the living room, bedroom or hallway into the living area of an advanced city dweller. The fashion trend is borrowed from Japan. Traditional lanterns (andons for the street and okiandons for the premises) consisted of a body with a cotton wick and lampshade. For centuries, the Japanese chose rice paper for the lampshade, which was much more durable than ordinary handwritten paper because of its long fibers. As an additional protection against spontaneous combustion Oriental craftsmen cover it with a special impregnation.

Pillows
Pillow is perhaps the most important item, on which needleworkers practice, but today large manufacturers can outdo them in the intricacy of decoration, and the painstaking care. It is not uncommon to see in the stores cushions of artificially aged fabrics, as if they had just been taken out of the trunk. Linen, lace upholstery, embroidery in small flowers – do you recognize the style of Russian folk craft? And the wool, stitched pieces of rough satin, large seams on the perimeter, deliberately made on the outside of the product, already give away the pillow with English origin. Another common variant for self-made cushions is the shape reminiscent of animal outlines, for example, two cats with their tails wrapped around each other. There are also classic square pillows, but the front side has a pocket, and a hare or a hippo sticking out of it. Finally, there is the fashion for pillow designs.