We just returned from a trip to Kenya. As we drove around, we stopped at several gift shops (they have rest rooms, and the roads have no rest areas.) The shops all had carved masks and animals, and beadwork items. Each shop told a story about the local folk crafting these objects, etc. Some even had artisans in back, ostensibly laboring away over some item or another. But, with very few exceptions, my impression was that the vast majority of the items for sale were identical - not only from gift shop to shop - but even in the airport and in a Masai village of mud and dung huts.
I admit that I am not an expert in assessing Kenyan handicraft, but I AM expert in being a cynic, and that part of me wondered if at least a good portion of these objects were mass produced somewhere, and then distributed among the shops for sale.
Not sure if there will be a factual answer to this question or whether it might be better in IMHO.
I’m sure it goes both ways and probably depends quite a bit on what exactly we’re talking about. It might be cheaper for you or I to import a few thousand of them from China but after all is said and done, someone in Kenya may well be able to produce them locally cheaper.
I think you also have to decide what ‘mass produced’ means WRT this conversation. Does it just mean ‘making a lot’ or are you thinking something more along the lines of being made in a factory/assembly line?
Here’s a video I watched a few months ago showing people in Kenya turning flip flops into art by hand.
They certainly have methods and tools that make it easier to make large numbers of these things, and the use of those tools certainly makes them all very similar to each other. I’m thinking things like stencils.
The same is probably also true for the “olive wood hand-carved in the Holy Land” vendors that make the rounds of churches in the US.
After the first 2-3 shops at the Pueblo village outside Taos, NM you notice a whole lot of familiar looking stuff. I don’t think they’re getting it from China or anything but it could be a matter of shared stock between stores or as simple as everyone honing in on the handful of pottery items all the tourists are most likely to buy. That’s not to say no one had their own items unique to their store but there was no shortage of little carved stone or pottery turtles and rabbits with a bead of turquoise in them and stuff like that.
If you walk onto the site and go in the first store, there’s a good chance you’ll see something and think “I don’t want to drop $75 right now but I’ll come back if I don’t see anything I like more”. By the time you get towards the end, if you see something close to the same that you like, it’s easy to pick that up rather than got back to Store #1 before you leave. One carved stone turtle is probably much the same as another even if each was made by a separate person in the tribe but carved turtles are a regular seller.
I have some handmade wooden items my grandfather brought home after World War 2. My thought was always- yes, these items are handmade by local artists. BUT, the local artist all work together on a human assembly line. It is somebody’s job to cut down trees. Somebody else brings the trunks back to the village. Somebody else cuts the trunks down into appropriately sized chunks. Somebody else cuts rough features into the chunks. Somebody else finalizes the features. Somebody else sands the carvings. Somebody else wraps a silver wire around the neck of each carving.
Are the Central American bookends and the African letter opener I inherited handmade? I have no doubt. I also have no doubt that the process I described above was used.
The main objects were animals/figurines/masks carved out of wood/soapstone. And beaded necklaces, bracelets, and belts. Even street vendors had similar appearing trinkets for sale. Each little wide spot in the road would claim that the artisans in the neighboring area were carving/beading these items. And at least a couple had 1-3 people in the back, appearing to be carving/smoothing the wooden objects.
I’d imagine it would be tough to find labor much cheaper than outside the big cities in Kenya, and to add significant shipping costs. But I found the economics of these shops fascinating and puzzling.
In some highly Maasai areas, some of the masks/figures seemed a little different. But many of the other items seemed identical - including highly stylized representations of animals/people. We bought a couple of little soapstone figure for the grandkids in a Maasai village, and then saw apparently identical figures in other shops and the airport. I was wondering how much was produced in the specific community (as was claimed), as opposed to - perhaps - in a large factory somewhere, and then shipped out to the rural areas to be sold on commission.
Also, each shop seemed to be stocked to overflowing, with pretty identical looking items. I wondered how many folk bought how much stuff, and how many local artisans would need to be working to produce that volume.
My knowledge is 40 years out of date, so may not apply any more.
The handcrafted leather, wool and wood products sold at the handicrafts “mall” near the handful of international class hotels (Marriott, Sheraton, Intercontinental) were indeed handmade, but basically in sweatshops by child laborers in many cases.
I think many of the Western buyers were perfectly aware that child labor in rug-making and leather goods was pervasive.
Most of the metal sculptures you see all over are mass produced in Mexico, usually unpainted. Wholesalers buy shipping containers full of them and resell them to places like The Metal Zoo who paint them for sale to the public.
Along the same lines, the geodes for sale in “rock shops” and souvenir places are shipped in by the ton from quarries in Mexico.
On the other hand, I discovered Oaxacan Wood Carvings – the kind seen in artsy-craftsy stores all over – are one of a kind. The creatures/designs may be similar but they’re individually hand crafted and no two are the same. I know this because I passed on buying this carved grasshopper and decided a week later to go back and get it. No such luck. My efforts to find another one (I’ve asked store owners and google image-searched for hours) have been to no avail.
Yes, all sorts of crafty items are produced in bulk, bought in wholesale quantities and sold at substantial profit. Isolated places where tour buses stop and hotel gift shops are often full of such items. If you see the same thing everywhere no matter how big or small the store, this is likely.
Yet places with well-heeled tourists might have many craftsfolk that make unique and desirable things. You don’t have to spend that much time in a place to get a sense of which is which, if you cannot tell from the quality.
In Mexico, resort towns sell an array of arts and crafts of variable quality and desirability. Prices might be much more than five times the actual value. But these towns might also have many skilled musicians, potters, weavers, painters, jewellers, etc. with workshops that make unique stuff to order and employ skilled people. In Mexico, whole towns are sometimes known for specific items - guitars from Paracho, etc. but this does not mean they are of poor quality. Quite the opposite, in fact. Even small towns usually have craft folk that can make beautiful furniture or paint something pleasant before your eyes.
…and that is why those types of craft objects are everywhere. Because they’re what sells to American tourists.
And yes, all those guys in the back rooms really are making some of the products you see for sale. And then back in their homes, there are more of their family and neighbours carving/beading/sewing. I’ve interacted with these guys to get “production” runs of beadwork .
It’s a form of piecework, not the kind of factory production you’re imagining.
It has always been the case, right back to knick-knacks produced for pilgrims in the Middle Ages.
There is probably some naivety that traditional cultures can only make things as cultural product for use in their own lives, and somehow are not capable of capitalising on income opportunities and production efficiencies. They do, and can be very good at it, and it sometimes benefits local communities in direct income, employment and supporting cultural knowledge.
Passing off cultural product that’s actually produced elsewhere and has no benefit to the communities its allegedly representing is a very bad thing. Before China there was Birmingham, which had a trade in all manner of antiques and handicrafts in the late 19th / early 20th century.
Most tourists are lazy and go only where the tour operators point. Do some research, look for provenanced items that identify who made them, research before you go and see what is actually being produced as artisanal craft. Make the same effort you would in buying a piece of clothes at home. Cynicism just gets you to the point of being smug at not being ripped off, it does nothing positive in repsonse.
If I may extend the OP’s question: What about “artisanal” products made right in front of the buyer’s eyes? The example I’m thinking of are the “your name on a grain of rice” vendors I’ve seen in Mediterranean countries. They’ll take a grain of rice, very accurately write your name on it with a very fine pen, and put it in a little plastic vial for you that you can wear on a necklace. It’s all done right in front of the customer, so it’s obviously handmade locally. But I’ve seen many different vendors use the exact same scheme, down to the plastic vials and fonts on the placards. That makes me wonder if there is some kind of integrated organisation that trains a large number of these vendors and supplies them wit the tools of the trade. Not exactly organised crime, but not exactly a local artisan either.
Years ago I met a guy who was visiting the US from his home in Mali, Africa. We met at an outdoor concert and I shared my weed. Through the magic of cannabis some friends of mine and I became friends with him.
His story was a sad one. He was an artist, but back home he was being forced to follow in his family’s footsteps as far as his job. He was not allowed to pursue his art.
We introduced him to some shop owners in Pittsburgh who sold art, and they liked his stuff. He made enough money to return home for more supplies (mostly the local wood he carved), then returned and spent 6 months doing his art in Pittsburgh.
The story of his success made its way back to his home. He was offered the equivalent of a poet laureate type position, so he returned to Mali to be an artist. As a thank you he gave me this carving.
Kenya is where soapstone comes from. And I had a brief look around to see if I could buy Soapstone Figures wholesale from China, and couldn’t find any. I can get rough-cut blocks, but since soapstone comes from Kenya, and rough-cutting is the easy part, I’d say that the soapstone figures are probably being churned out by local artisans.
