INSTINCTUAL
INTENTIONAL
SYMBOLIC
SOMATIC
HUMAN
HEALING
SLOW CRAFT VALUES
"Slow craft advocates for production methods that prioritize quality, durability, and a mindful, deliberate creation process over speed and mass production. It emphasizes the intrinsic value of human skill, locally sourced materials, and a deeper connection to the act of making. This approach resists the pressures of rapid consumption."
@lifestyle.sustainability-directory.com
I practice slow craft as a method of personal healing. Slow craft ("slow" referring to a lack of rapidity and extended experience) demonstrates the transformative power that craft brings the self when used as a therapeutic tool for careful processing. Imbuing intentionality into my objects and retelling my personal stories through deliberate, meditative focus with my materials, slow craft is my way of practicing and rediscovering the essence of mindfulness.
- Grace
BODY-BASED HEALING
Somatic therapy takes a fresh approach to psychotherapy by recognizing the body as a primary site of healing and change. Unlike traditional talk therapy that mainly targets cognitive processes, somatic therapy engages with physical sensations, movements, and bodily awareness. Somatic therapy is based on the idea that the body holds memories and unresolved trauma in ways our conscious minds often cannot access.
Licensed clinician Vivian Chung Easton
The slow craft approach can be seen as combining somatic (body-based) ideas with healing art therapy values, processing trauma in the craftsman's body and providing physical and mental release through deliberate craftwork. Slow craft brings healing energy into the creative process and within the final results of craft objects, while also including the planet in its healing philosophy.
- Grace
EARTH-CENTRIC CONSTRUCTION
"The slow craft approach inherently supports sustainability by encouraging reduced consumption, promoting the use of local and often natural materials, and fostering products designed for longevity and repair. It minimizes waste generation and carbon emissions associated with globalized supply chains. Slow craft also preserves traditional skills and supports local economies."
@lifestyle.sustainability-directory.com
The earth should be a key consideration in the construction of any object, ensuring its longevity, quality, durability, and sustainability so it can be used to its highest potential. "Cradle-to-cradle" refers to the cyclical lifespan of an object through a conceptual, idealized circular material economy. This reimagines the end-of lifespan waste of old products into endlessly renewable resources, creating zero environmental waste. This ensures that materials and components are repurposed or recycled and stay separate from the natural world.
- Grace
“Woodworkers follow a long tradition dating to the beginning of civilized man. The first wheel must have been wood... These skilled artisans from the fargone past speak with urgency and insistence. They are lighting the lamp for us to follow... so that we may offer the tree a second life of dignity and strength…
…Contemporary treaties might benefit from being written on a good honest table. How can one expect a sincere treaty signed on veneer, green felt, or on wood grained to look like marble?… Some of the most creative moments of the poet and the prophet must have taken place at a desk, so the construction of a desk must be sincere…"
⁃ George Nakashima, The Soul of a Tree
“I have said it often enough, but I must say it once again… as long as man allows his work to be mere unrelieved drudgery,
he will seek happiness in vain…
We do most certainly need happiness in our daily work, content in our daily rest; and all of this cannot be if we hand over the whole responsibility of the details of our daily lives to machines and their drivers. We are right to long for intelligent handicraft to come back to the world where it once made tolerable amidst war and turmoil and uncertainty of life…”
- William Morris, The Revival of Handicraft
MEANING & SYMBOLISM
THE TALLY
The tally mark represents a sense of contemplative, devoted repetition, representing the passing of time and the completion of a cycle. 5 numerology is significant to the symmetry of the human body and is the building block to our mathematical awareness. The tally mark may also represent slow growth, patience, habitual stability, the act of mark-making, mundanity, and tracking growth.
THE SPIRAL
The spiral, one of the most ancient and universal symbols in human history, is often seen as representing exponential spiritual growth, inner to outer transformation, evolution, transcendence, eternal progression, the cyclical nature of existence and internal insight and reflection. It occurs in nature as the golden ratio, mathematically perfect in its endless expansion.
THE CHRYSALIS
My Chrysalis pattern is a simplified version of the phenomenon of the fractal, representing our place in the universe. This patterning is reminiscent of the repetitive nestling/wrapping patterns that are characteristic to the veins of leaves and the wings of insects. This pattern demonstrates a microcosm of the vast network of sacred geometry that interconnects our biological world.
REQUIREMENTS FOR A THING
MANIFESTO by GRACE
USE AND FOOTPRINT
1. An object should do as much as it can, and then disappear.
2. An object should be spending all its energy being the best thing it can be, and the more it can provide, the better the object is.
3. If the object can do multiple meaningful things gracefully, this is even better.
4. An object should spend as little energy as possible being made, and should be sustainable enough to erase or reuse its body with minimal effort.
5. If an object can provide mental benefits as well as physical, then the object has transcended its use.
6. If an object is loved deeply, used habitually or sentimentally, or is given away as an heirloom, the object has succeeded in its highest form.
SELLING AND CURRENCY
1. An object should never be sold as a facade or a scam.
2. An object must not be sold before it knows it's own value, and it should not be made/sold solely for personal gain.
3. An object must be a truly beneficial thing before it can be sold, otherwise the product is not truthful in its purpose.
4. The only time a object should be sold is when it is a completely natural, essential situation, without any coercion.
5. The user should feel factually and intuitively sure that they need the object, and that it will provide them with joyful benefits.
6. An object should exist as proof as to why we have and need money, reimagining the word “essentials”.