Artist Mission

The Creation of Artisan Crafts for Lower Income Populations

By: Rheda Rosenberger

July, 2025 

Living in many different regions of the United States, I have found myself with a unique look on art in the home throughout different economic standings. Seeing friends grow up in multi million dollar mansions and others in trailer parks gave perspective to many things in life, but one noticeable thing is how each family would interact with art, mainly usable art like ceramics and dinnerware. 

In terms of mass produced or machine made works versus artisan made pieces, there will be people no matter the economic background that will always gravitate towards the mass produced. There are high end machine made works, as well as low end. Although I believe there is a perceived notion that lower income families gravitate more towards mass produced products, this isn’t necessarily true as some high income families gravitate towards it because of it being highly replaceable. In an incessant necessity to consume, high income families can have a tendency to churn through art, negating the value of art within the home, while low income families that gravitate towards the mass produced might buy a mug and keep it until it quite literally falls apart. Although each person’s collection of items is personal and unique to them, there is a lack of human touch and quality found in these items.

However, there will be people who, no matter their economic standing, want man made art pieces that come from inherently expensive art fields. In families with a surplus of wealth, there is a priority to decorate their home with high quality works ranging from handmade ceramics, to sculptures, and paintings of any variety. Time and resources are a given in being able to either research artists to decorate their house in, or to be able to outsource others to decorate their space for them. This allows for a personalized space that is not only beautiful and unique, but cohesive. In contrast, lower income families are not without this type of art consumption, it is more the way of consumption that shows a difference between the two groups. Mass produced mainstream or machine art and design are common in the lower income family. Instead of handmade ceramic mugs, mugs from major brands with many different graphics are common. If there are man made pieces (not made from family members) they are usually thrifted for pennies to the dollar, and kept for decades, either brought out for special occasions or very carefully taken care of, only to be passed down from generation to generation. This type of consumption can then lead to a large collection of many different types of pieces, which depending on the individual's intent, can create or destroy any consensus of a cohesive home. The quality of items also becomes a theme in low income houses as even if handmade items are acquired, since they are mostly second hand, they have had previous owners who may have damaged the items, not taken care of them properly, or just had the items for a long enough time for age to factor into the well-keptness of the item. 

This unknown factor of the quality of second hand items, mixed with the general ease of wear seen in machine made pieces can cause a lower income family the need to replace items at a faster rate than what could be seen if there were access to new high quality art items in the first place. An unframed poster can tear easier and machine made ceramics has a tendency to chip and break easier. Art becomes less of a curated long lasting choice, and more of a utility of decoration - the utility to fill a space or to only have art in spaces that are usable I.E. a mug or plate as that becomes the justification in owning art itself. When you’re someone living paycheck to paycheck, worried about getting enough food on the table for you or your kids (not mentioning medical bills or other financial burdens that plague lower income spaces), your priority is not finding art. So how do you bridge that gap?

A lot of that comes down to word of mouth and going to spaces where lower income families exist. This can look like farmers markets or other community pop ups and events. This is the first hurdle, the second is making your art a worthwhile purchase. 

There is no way to make a handmade piece as inexpensive as mass produced machine pieces while making a living making art in the first place. Artists need to earn a living, which is one of the reasons making pieces for lower income families is so hard as they do not have the excess income to spend on making sure you can put food on your own table on short notice. There needs to be a framework mindset change where there is space for both of these realities, which is why making pieces worthwhile is of such an importance. For Ceramics in particular, this becomes making pieces that will last for decades, through children, moves, life and death, and everyday use. 

This is where my experience as a ceramicist that mainly focuses on the wheel shines and where my experience as an oil painter falters. There is legit no way to make a livable profit off of original oil paintings without undervaluing the amount materials cost and frankly the time oil paintings take to complete. Luckily, prints can be made out of the original painting, which can be sold in mass at a much lower price, making the access to your art, even if it’s not the original, accessible to a wide margin of the population. Ceramics, on the other hand, doesn’t have a choice but be only sold by the original project. Wheel throwing then becomes necessary in giving a human being the ability to mass produce at a scale much faster than hand building. This turns a very expensive art practice into something a little faster, therefore giving the artist the ability to sell things at a reasonable price for a lower income family and giving the artist enough of an income to pay their own rent and put food on their table. 

Except, that doesn’t negate that at the end of the day, machine made pieces will always be cheaper, so we come back to the question of how do you make your usable art worth it to a family that may not have a lot of surplus income to spend on such a comparatively cheap item, like a bowl or mug. I don’t believe there are going to be one hundred percent correct options for this as every family is going to have different needs that may or may not clash with an artist’s style. I also cannot speak on art forms such as furniture making, fiber arts, or many other usable art forms as I only have experience in the creation and selling of ceramics. 

That said, what I do in my ceramics work to make it a worthwhile larger purchase for a person who may come from a lower economic background, is try to make my ceramics as life proof as possible. The delicate and beautiful work of porcelain, for example, may not work within a house of children, so I enjoy making my dinnerware pieces with thicker walls. I also try my best to work within the Cone 6 to Cone 10 range, as those temperature ranges allow for an increase in structural integrity. This is to help in making my ceramics drop, fall, or accident proof. I will never be able to make unbreakable ceramics that are still usable in the day to day, but I can try my best to at least give a structural integrity to pieces, if only to sway the anxiety of using hand made pieces in the day to day rather than just for special occasions. I also am more drawn to the look of single colored glazes in my most recent work, as that is also a way to cut down on the cost of time and labor. 

Another way to make handmade ceramics more accessible for lower income individuals is education surrounding the different transformations ceramics can take, and how to take care of ceramics before it has a chance to break. At the end of the day, with the right kind of glazes, clay, and cone firing, handmade ceramics are dishwasher, microwave, and oven safe. All of these aspects, though, can shorten the lifetime of ceramics as cracks tend to happen with age and use. But at the end of the day, within my own art, I want to promote the ease of use for ceramics and to push for my items to be used in these ways because everyone should have the access to beauty in the mundane and everyday. What I believe is more important for the joy within my own work than the anxiety and prevention of harm to my pieces of work is the reminder that ceramics can be repaired. 

Kintsugi, or Kintsukuroi, is an old and traditional Japanese practice of repairing ceramics, and also my favorite repairing practice. Traditionally, this would be done with a silver or, more commonly, gold lacquer with the belief and understanding that “the piece is more beautiful for having been broken”. It is the honor of use that is beautiful, and something I want to encourage within all my pieces. Although this is a very very old practice, there are ways it has been modernized to make it more accessible to the average day person. Now, the average person won’t know where to start looking as Kintsugi is not a common practice in the Western world, so my goal with selling my work is to make a pamphlet or zine that shows instructions on how to practice Kintsugi, but also shares my belief in the honor of my pieces being used commonly, because even if my pieces break, they can take on a new form that is still usable. 

With all of this in mind, where do I see the future of my work heading and what forms do I want to take my work moving forward? My goal for the next couple of years is to mainly focus on my technique in wheel throwing and paying attention to the forms I throw more and more. The joy in hand made pieces is an ideal I want to permeate throughout all of my work. As I get better at ceramics throughout my career, I succinctly want my forms to become more and more interesting while still usable. Everyday bowls become an art itself, added only more by the food put into them. The use of items is what brings them value for me, and although not everything I will create will be usable in that way, it is the joy of creation to the use of the creation that inspires all my wheel thrown ceramics work.