Why we need to build back our small business environment.
Because we need to take back our personal freedom
When the New York City Board of Fractured Atlas said that Andersen Design’s life-long purpose is “for the money”, Andersen Design was not alone as a victim of groundless assertions by corporate bureaucrats and overlords, granting no avenue of appeal. It’s happening everywhere that spaces are ruled by the large and the algorithms.
The board is mined from the heights of the non-profit world. This is the creative economy writ large, with its own version of Creative Economy Newspeak, eliminating words by removing them from context and redefining their meaning.
Newspeak was a language favored by the minions of Big Brother and, in Orwell's words, "designed to diminish the range of thought." Miriam Webster Dictionary
To define production as “being only in it for the money” certainly does limit the range of thought. When my parents created Andersen Design with the purpose of creating a handcrafted product affordable to the middle classes, they were not limiting the range of thought about production, they were reinventing it in response to cultural transformations taking place during their times.
My father was raised on a farm in Iowa where corporate farming was expanding.
Corporate farming, then, includes practices of large-scale agricultural entities engaging in corporatized practices to increase the overall production and output of agricultural products, while seeking higher profits and returns.
Family farming is a term associated with traditional notions of farming in America: it represents the independently owned farm situated in rural America. On the family farm, “the operator and family provide over half the labor, management, and equity capital.” In general, family farming is consistent with popular notions of farming in the United States where the individual farmer and her family grow crop and raise livestock, produce agricultural products, and sell these products at a market or to a distributor.
Dad studied Industrial design at Pratt Institute, He learned slip-casting from Eva Zeisel, as a way for designers to understand designing for industry, but Eva was taken aback when Dad told her he was moving to Maine to start his own industry. That was when my parents joined the Great Resignation, in the year 1952, except that then it did not have the critical mass that is the reason it is called the “great” resignation.
Like a scene from the 1948 novel, Andersen Design was declined the opportunity to apply for non-profit funding for using a word, “production”.
Production is the source of wealth creation, which the non-profit industry concentrates and redistributes, but the industry doesn’t often talk about the root source of wealth. The large for-profit corporations that create the foundations that fund the non-profit corporations depend on production, even if it is hidden away in the developing worlds, or developed nations like China.
Working Conditions Still Poor for China’s Factory Workers, Says Watchdog Organization Epoch Times November 30, 2017 Updated: October 8, 2018
Production that funds the large for-profit corporations that fund the foundations that fund the non-profit corporations look like this:
Or this:
They do not look like this:
Historic Roots
Following is a quote from Learning to Give, a non-profit whose purpose is to equip K12 teachers to teach students to be philanthropists. It is created for the 6-12 educational levels and mixes truth with bias.
Before the Industrial Revolution, manufacture of goods needed for daily life was largely done in homes or small shops. Hand tools and simple machines in the hands of skilled craftsmen and women produced textiles, clothing, ceramics, glass, tools, and furniture. Masters worked side-by-side with their apprentices, who often lived in the same household. Agriculture was done on a small scale using handmade tools. The result was generally high prices for relatively crude goods. Philanthropy and the Industrial Revolution Grade Level: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
The last sentence in the above quote is as unnecessary as it is oxymoronic. By definition, skilled artisans and master craftsmen do not produce “crude goods for high prices”. Pre-Industrial Revolution work relationships were more complexly organized than this description suggests, and like any system, produced a range of quality, much of it very refined as described in the encyclopedia.com
Preindustrial Manufacturing
In the period preceding this revolution, from the bubonic plague of 1348 to the 1770s, a sophisticated system of manufacturing had emerged in early modern Europe. This system, called preindustrial for the sake of simplicity, produced products of amazing complexity, from delicate watches and porcelain ware to printed books, pistols, telescopes, silk tapestries, and the great Spanish galleons, Portuguese carracks, and English East Indiamen that sailed across the globe. The quality and diversity of these products are a tribute to the skilled labor force that created them.
As soon as my parents opened their gallery in a 200-year-old barn on Southport Island, Maine. the public referred to the affordable products created in the slip-cast production as “art”. Those were the days before professional branding.
After the Town of Boothbay refused to allow Andersen Design to expand on land we owned across the street from our house, Andersen Design had a production in Portland, Maine employing about 25 people. I was living in New York City at the time. The consensus is that the smaller style of production located in or attached to the home is better. No doubt we would still have our production if we had been allowed to expand on our own land in an environment that makes sense to the Andersen Design production philosophy. close proximity between work and home and a natural surrounding makes a difference in creating a handcrafted nonfungible product.
Production is a historical dialogue in and of itself. It cannot be reduced to a singular motivation declared by anyone, let alone by those who have no direct involvement with a production process, as none of the biographies below show, though the arts and financial management are well represented. Some of the biographies include the study of history but that study must have skipped the history of production and its relevance to our times.
HOLLY SIDFORD
RUSSELL WILLIS TAYLOR
ALANNA WEIFENBACH
ALEXANDRA FARKAS
CHRISTOPHER J MACKIE PH D
E ANDREW TAYLOR
LISA YANCEY
These are members of the board that disqualified Andersen Design as a social enterprise by asserting that the use of the word “production” on our application means that we are only in it for the money. Many of the biographies talk about their expertise in business but by the measure of their knowledge, business knowledge is limited to financial networking.
Reading these biographies, intensive in art and business, one would expect the board members to know that if one is only in it for the money in the ceramic production field, that production would have been relocated to a developing nation in the eighties.
See this paper Published 26 Oct 2021
Current Status of Ceramic Industry and VR Technology Used in Ceramic Display and Dissemination
Over the past 30 years of reform and opening up, China’s ceramic industry has developed rapidly. China has taken the forefront of ceramic development, becoming the center of ceramic manufacturing and the main producer of ceramics, with the first annual output and export. Chinese daily ceramics are about 70% of the world, 65% and about 50% of sanitary ceramics, and 64% of construction ceramics. Due to the obvious labor cost and resource advantages, the competitiveness of China’s ceramic industry is also being rapidly improving, and its position in the world ceramic market is being rapidly improving
One might expect people with the backgrounds cited in these biographies to know that if one is only in it for the money in our industry, glazes are not interactive, glazes are stable and predictable. That is how it works in a production that is only in it for the money.
My family made its living from its productive activity with the income processing like a background activity. The foreground is the creative and productive work. Creative and productive go together like a pair of hands. In ceramic production, repetitive work is meditative and therapeutic. One starts a repetitive action. One is familiar with the process. It is a sensual awareness, a relationship to real things in a natural world. How slowly or quickly does one dip this piece in the white glaze? Do we slightly turn it as we take it out to make sure it drips at a particular angle? It becomes second nature. With attention focused on the angle of the dripping glaze, the rest of the mind wanders around and entertains itself.
My mother. Brenda decorated pieces with the production patterns like the brown tree, and she spontaneously created one-of-a-kind decorative work. One-of-a-kind works were not planned, they just happened, but to have the ability to successfully execute artwork with such freedom, one needs to have an innate control of the medium, which comes about through repetitive practice.
The repetitive aspect of the decorating production patterns refines one’s crafts and skills. Daily practice makes perfect. One understands the qualities and interactions of the medium and becomes one with it. That is what it means to be a skilled artisan or a master craftsman. The goal is not to produce a crude high-priced piece of work!
My father studied industrial design at Pratt and took the signifier literally. He did not only design for industry, he designed industry, his own way, using production as the art medium. Andersen Design is an Industrial Revolution-era production based on the pre-Industrial Revolution production model but introducing an artistic freedom and sensibility that is unique in industry, but quite appropriate to the post Industrial Revolution era.
Karmic Justice
Fractured Atlas lost its headquarters space in NYC during covid and now is working from a virtual office. and is an advocate of remote working and working at home.
Take it or leave it?
The dominant system with Its one-way street negotiating style has been accepted since the force first created cyberspace.
“These are the terms, take it or leave it”, no negotiations or options to appeal the assertions made by corporate boards.
Such terms of an agreement are acceptable in some situations and to a degree, but after that point, take a pause and entertain the possibility of other options.
The world of small businesses offers greater diversity.
Take for example 1stdibs. I haven’t kept up with that venue since I considered it a few years back.
The big becomes bigger
It is Ironic to read the newest spin around the latest merger of the big and the big in the fields of antiques and interior design:
The Bruno Effect, a New Antiques Marketplace, Has Launched—and It’s Prioritizing Client-Dealer Relationships
Having good fortune in the design industry often stems from a foundation of great relationships—a theory perhaps best demonstrated by that of the dealer-client dynamic. When it comes to rare and one-of-a-kind pieces, reward comes to those at the top of an antique dealer’s call sheet. Architectural Digest
Founder Carmine Bruno has more than 15 years of industry experience to believe so. Bruno began his career as a midcentury art dealer. In 2006, he went on to build out the antiques dealer roster on British antiques platform Online Galleries. When 1stDibs acquired the site in 2012—a deal that tripled the size of its U.K. dealer directory—Bruno became the managing director of 1stDibs International. (It’s also worth noting that Carmine Bruno has no relation to 1stDibs founder Michael Bruno.) Bruno stepped down from his managing director role in late 2019
When dealing with 1stdibs, after moving easily past the first gate, and into what was declared to be a partnership relationship, I tested said partnership the old-fashioned way, by kicking it to see how it runs. I asked 1stdibs to sign a non-disclosure agreement, an unremarkable commonplace request in our dealings with small companies.
I had nothing to lose in asking 1stdibs to sign a non-disclosure agreement because 1stdibs was asking Andersen Design for something impossible to deliver unless 1stdibs was also offering capitalization. 1stdibs was asking for a high-end line which I mentioned in the application as a direction that we were interested in developing, not as a line that already exists.
What is a partnership if not a collaborative relationship between organizations?
In a partnership relationship, terms are a two-way negotiation.
Before applying, I reviewed the 1stdibs website and discovered an unadvertised fact. Istdibs sells products that are priced consistently with the price-point of our production line but 1stdibs did not mention this price point as a possibility.
Istdibs established its market dominance through the vintage market. Here is the 1960s Tree Motif Stoneware Orb Vase Andersen Design Studios Large Centerpiece. It is a wonderful example of the unique “production” quality that Andersen Design delivered. This bowl was probably decorated by my mother, or possibly by Gerda. It is inimitable nonfungible art, an example of Andersen Design’s lifelong approach to production as an art form
Istdibs charges a hefty fee to sell in its vintage market so it was advised that we do the high-end contemporary line. Such a line would take at least a year to develop and requires a financial investment. I prepared a portfolio of ideas but before presenting it, I asked 1stdibs to sign an NDA agreement.
The response was flat. “We are not going to sign that agreement”. If it were an issue of terms, they can be negotiated. The response was “We don’t do “negotiate” We make the terms and our partners can take them or leave them”.
The 1stdibs theory of great relationships does not extend to platform-vendor relationships.
That did not surprise me, but Andersen Design is its own brand with a long history as an alternative niche market. We can work with that. We can create our own model. That’s what we do. Imagine if were in conjunction with a network of home studios working in the tradition of production as an art form.