Tami King

A Piece of Me for a Piece of You

Today, there is a popular trend appearing in the market: handmade goods. With recent concerns about environmental disasters, artists are creating items by hand, providing great quality items without the effects of a factory. More importantly, the artists themselves enjoy creating items for other people to enjoy, myself included. Society and the internet today are allowing artists to give consumers a piece of them through their products.

Shopping online has become the norm with sites such as Etsy.com, Ebay.com, and Craiglist.com. As an artist myself, I strongly support other artists and purchase handmade items from Etsy.com frequently. There’s something nice about knowing the other person had spent their time and energy into a single piece of work. You can tell that the artist enjoyed making the object and that makes it even more enjoyable to purchase. I know from experience that creating things is very rewarding and I support other artists when I can.

Out With the Old

One of the recent items that I sold was a small glass bottle charm with pearl and star beads inside. I had bought several glass bottles online about a year ago with no real idea what I was going to do with them. An opportunity to use them opened up when I received a string of star beads from a friend. I saw the bottles sitting on my desk after setting the string of beads down next to them and inspiration took hold of me. The brightly colored plastic stars needed something to play up on the color. I had remembered that I had many small iridescent pearl beads and decided to mix the two together in the bottles. The milky pearls remind me of pieces of clouds while the bright colors of the stars make me think of a vivid rainbow. I made several because I enjoy making items but I also thought that maybe someone else would like to enjoy this as much as I do. I put a bit of myself into each of these charms, almost like a piece of me is bottled up along with the stars and pearls. My time and energy was, happily, spent making these charms and I hoped that it would be apparent to whoever wanted to purchase it.

When I was making the charms, I had pictured that someone similar to me would be interested in buying one. I assumed that a girl who enjoyed cute objects to hang from cell phones, cameras or handheld game consoles would end up purchasing the charm. A mother ended up buying the charm for her daughter as a gift. It is currently on its way to Philadelphia. When her daughter gets the charm, she will also end up receiving a piece of me and my time that I had invested into the piece. However, the item was chosen for her because it reminded her mother of her, therefore there is also a piece of her in that charm.

In With the New

The item that I purchased is a handmade silver pendant necklace with a crown stamped into it, like an old wax seal. The seller is located in Canada. I picked this item not only because it’s a pretty necklace, but because recently, crowns have become an important symbol to me. My last name is King and my father only had two daughters, my younger sister and myself. He once told me that since his brothers and sister never had any sons, the King name in our family would die out. When I was younger, I was really sad that part of my identity would eventually disappear. Recently, my dad has gotten extremely ill and my whole family is worried about his health. It got me thinking about what he said when I was younger and I wanted something that I could hold on to just in case he passes away soon.

The artist may not have intended for this piece to evoke such a strong emotional response, but the piece has a very big piece of me with it. I bought the necklace with the intention of keeping it as long as I can and eventually handing it down to my children as a way of keeping the King name in our family. My hope is that it will become an heirloom in my future family. When the artist shipped it out, she sent a piece of herself and her labor with it, but I am receiving a piece of myself as well.

Packages and Consumption

Jean Baudrillard in The Consumer Society discusses the idea of product “packages” (26). The idea is that the market creates similar items that are meant to be sold as a set or evoke the want of the full set. When I was creating the bottle charms that I sold, I made charms in several colors. I assumed that people would only pick the color that they wanted, but I had people buy more than one in different colors. I had unknowingly created a package of items on the market and people were trying to get the whole set of colors. I noticed the same was happening in the shop where I had bought my necklace from. She had several charms put together with the intention of selling them as a set. I could see the appeal of wanting to collect multiple charms; however, I was only interested in one particular charm so the effect of the package was lost on me.

I believe that some people can get carried away when they are buying new items. When purchasing one thing, you may need to buy several more items in order to complete a set or to even use the one thing you had originally purchased. However, in my case, I feel like the sentimental value of a single item overcame the desire to buy multiples to complete a set. Quality over quantity. After this whole item exchange, I don’t feel any different about how I consume items, but I do feel a little more conscious about how things are being presented to me. It’s so easy to be drawn in with sets and collections, but I feel like I can now spot out obvious packages and potentially save myself some money by only buying what I need instead of having more items thrown into a package. If I’ve learned anything from this experience, I would say it would have to be that quality and sentimental value is more important than just obtaining a lot of unnecessary stuff.