There is something so poetic and conflicting about the inevitable passing of time, and mankind’s utterly futile attempts to prevent it. You can try to resist, make efforts to stay the passage of ageing and control the physical, or you can learn to embrace it. I would opt for the latter. There is an old Greek proverb that states society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they may never sit.
I still believe that. I’ve seen it.
For many years, I wrote about the whisky and wine industries. I talked about tannins and lees, assessed structure and ascertained notes, and despite all my work, I still know very little about making spirits. I am a terrible dinner party guest and my best insights about wine are usually that the ’red pairs well with the white’, but all that time interviewing malt masters and blenders gave me something else, something much more important.
You see, what I learned in the barrel houses and vineyards, the universal truth that stands above all others, had absolutely nothing to do with wine and whisky at all. It was about sacrifice and the abject surrender of ego.
A malt turner in Scotland named Iain proudly professed to me once that the whisky he was making and barrelling wouldn’t be opened for at least another 20 years. Iain, already well into his sixties, must have seen the surprise on my face because without a second’s hesitation, he clarified; ‘not that I’ll be around to see it’, before turning back to his rake and trowel.
I was struck, not by the longevity of the process, but by Iain’s acute self-awareness. He wasn’t sad about not seeing his work come to fruition, he was immensely proud to have played a hand in creating it; even if that meant he himself would never have the opportunity to taste it.
And that’s what I love about makers.
There is no need for immediate gratification. Satisfaction comes in the daily work, the small moments of basic practice and consistent repetition. The more time I’ve spent around makers, watching them work, listening to how they talk about what they do, the more I realise how important that mindset is. For them, the outcome is almost incidental. What matters is everything that happens before; all the first drafts, failures and little rewrites that prove an idea is worthy.
We don’t really value that anymore.
Somewhere along the way, we confused speed with progress. The faster something is made, the more valuable it must be. The more you can automate, optimise and eliminate human error, the better the final product, but within that quest for perfection, we lose something more important; our connection to the past.
Handmade objects carry meaning; they exist as tangible reminders of a bygone era, relics of a time when things were built to last. If you’ve ever looked at an old piece of furniture or stared at the beauty of Gothic architecture, you know that efficiency is, quite often, overrated. Curved lines and sharp edges appeal to our senses, they evoke our most primal human urges; that of intrigue and desire. Great design should make you feel something and seeing the tiny imperfections or slight asymmetry of a piece should give you an indication of the kind of person who made it. You don’t always get that from an IKEA flatpack.
To me, it matters now more than ever.
Late last year, research from The Guardian found that an estimated 20 per cent of new online articles are AI-produced, with AI slop accounting for nearly 10 per cent of YouTube’s fastest-growing channels. The MIT Media Lab pointed to the confusing contradiction that while AI use has doubled at work since 2023, roughly 95 per cent of organisations see no measurable return.
We are in a crisis of creation. There has never been more product, more content, more stuff, and yet, we are left with more questions than answers.
When we rely on AI to create art, culture, work and entertainment, we invariably enter into a feedback loop that recycles the same content back to us at increasingly diminishing quality. There are no new ideas, only copies of the copy.
The only rebuttal is originality, and you won’t find that in ChatGPT or Claude Code. That exists in the workshops and studios of makers. As we grapple with this overwhelm of content, the role of the artisan becomes all the more important; not because we need more things, but because we need more people who understand how to make them. We need more craftspeople who know what it means to stay with a problem, to work through uncertainty and to care about the process, not merely the outcome.
That’s what MADE is really about.
This title is not simply a chance to celebrate craftsmanship but an opportunity to document the way makers think. When you see the decisions they make and hear their philosophy first-hand, you understand why artistry is about so much more than the finished product.
Craftspeople may make things with their hands, but they build with their hearts. There is no artificial romance to the process and every calloused finger and bloodied knuckle counts as an acknowledgment of effort. Making isn’t a means to an end.
It’s for the trees that haven’t yet been planted and the whisky that is still yet to be bottled. That’s why we need makers, because you can’t optimise authenticity, you can’t replicate the rewards of patience and you can never prompt passion like Iain’s.
This article is featured in The Foreword, a series of thoughtful reflections from founder Nicholas Hall on the meaning, philosophy, and future of making. These essays explore cultural, material and intellectual contexts, providing deeper insights into the creative process and philosophy behind MADE Journal.
