(not) just spoons
My tiny batch of kitchenware, and some thoughts on making things!
foodstuff is a free reader-supported publication that releases new material twice monthly. To receive one essay and one veggie-centred recipe right to your inbox, consider becoming a subscriber. If you’re already a supporter, thank you, thank you, thank you for being here with me!!
If you missed the last issue of foodstuff, check it out: Coffee Cake Muffin Recipe
I’m launching a tiny collection of cooking companions today, so I’ve not been doing much food writing the past couple weeks. Lots of sanding, though… and thinking about what it means to make things and to ascribe value to those things. In sum: it’s thorny business!
For those who don’t already know, making wooden kitchenwares has become a pretty big part of my life over the past year. Carving has been one of the only activities that keeps my brain and body both calm and engaged at the same time; it’s such an embodied practice, and in ways I never anticipated. There are the carving sounds, of course, the smells and feels of different types of wood, but then there is also this imaginative component that makes it more than a personal practice.
Making functional objects means thinking about their uses, and of the mystery person who will one day (hopefully) use them.
There’s something really intimate, strange and lovely about anticipating how someone might hold an object. To accommodate for another person in such a tangible way, and in a way that is so central to the artistic process, is not something I’ve really every had the opportunity to do before. And something I’m still learning.
Being in someone’s home, in someone’s kitchen, in someone’s hand feels like a huge responsibility! It both is and is not a big deal that I make things people can use every day. They’re just spoons. They’re just spoons.
Thinking about my wares as the useful and mundane objects they are gets at the complicate nature of my relationship to my own labour, as well as the labour of others, while also foregrounding my own appreciation of small joys. As someone who loves food, I have a certain affinity with and respect for the mundane and banal, which is never really mundane or banal.
In my own home, I’ve started to keep more and more art made by friends and community members, specifically, things I use every day. Things that I hold in my hand, that I drink from, that I read, that I use to adorn my agenda. That I think with. These treasures are so valuable in the little world of my home because of how I interact with them and how regularly I do so.
But they’re there because someone made them.
Someone gave their time to make something for me to hold every day.
Someone turned clay into a cup, an idea into an illustration, a question into a book.
Despite how seemingly simple their function, how could you possibly assign value to these brilliant transformations? I don’t know!
As creatives know too well, this question is at the crux of my frustration. As much as I love to make weird spoons, I hate assigning them monetary value! It sucks. Especially when doing so either reinforces (albeit, in a tiny way) the economic barriers you hate, or devalues your creative work and the creative work of others. If I charge too much, it bars certain people from accessing my work. If I charge too little, I won’t be able to keep making things sustainably or enjoyably, and might negatively impact those selling similar wares!
I don’t really have anything profound to say about the process of selling well. Maybe I will the more I do it. Maybe it will always suck. Maybe you have some experience on this front that you’d like to share?
In any case, thanks for indulging my babble! And thank you to everyone who has already supported me in my kitchenware journey. Grateful I’ve not had to do this hard work entirely on my own! I love you!
If you’re interested in browsing the collection, you can do so at the following link: