Scale kills Craft

The challenge with craft is scale. Products, services, art created through intense focus and love, often one at a time. Each piece in one way or another signed by its creator through small differences, flaws, textures. Each one an original, a memory and a collectible, limited in number by the capacity of the creator.

The challenge with scale is craft. Products and services deconstructed to minute elements of process, and reassembled to ensure precise replication, standardisation and efficiency. The original created by an artist, and replicated through technology, each with precisely the same quirks of the original. Each one guaranteed to be the same, making the original invisible.

The commercial challenge comes with the balance between price and relationship. I pay around £250 for a pair of Hiut selvedge denim jeans. That makes them around three times the price of a pair of branded jeans from a High St store.

At a functional level, they last longer, and when they get a bit too worn. I ca…