To make is human….
{Once} is a platform dedicated to promoting the skilful practice of craftsmanship and design. Whether it’s’ music, weaving or cooking we are most alive when we are making. All of us can make something but for the times when we can’t, the next best thing is to feel, hear or see the mastery of someone else.
I am often surprised by the joy I get from the beauty in mastery. When what matters to someone is apparent in the application of skill involved in an object a meal or a piece of music, it raises our consciousness and inspires us to care about something, to have something matter to us. In a technology flattened world….watching, wearing, or hearing, skilful human practice gives surprising meaning and joy.
We inhabit a shared world where there are highly skilled individuals creating works that are deeply meaningful and essential to life. By engaging with them, we are pulled into stories, processes, and histories common to our humanity… We become involved and connected to the world around us. And we begin a journey of discovery of our own.
This project grew out of a postgraduate innovation research project at Goldsmiths, University of London in the summer of 2010. Through our retail shop and styling work, we discovered that people had a desire for a meaningful experience when they engaged in retail transactions and that the closer we could bring the design and history of the objects into the experience, the more enriching it would be. So we developed the concept of a online retail platform using the power of photography, audio, visual media and social networking to tell the story of the modern artisans.