No. Isn't because it is a demanding or hard job as many justify.
Professions that demand the best from us or that are hard have always existed and that is not why they are at risk of extinction. Nor can the boom in industrialization or the Chinese be the only ones to blame. There is a share of guilt in each of us.
I can speak as a first person: asking 17-year-old Esperança Vitória, why did she give up on the first opportunity of the family crafts she learned when she didn't even know how to read?
The answer would be on the tip of the tongue:
- Because it is not sustainable to live from handicrafts. Because it's not remunerated. Because I will not have a stable future to give to my children.
If you saw your parents all his life surviving from an art that wasn't enough to pay the bills and put the food on the table - despite the 3 daughters helping to weave baskets - to work in handicrafts as a complement to the wages of the factory where they worked - would you want to live the same way your parents survived?
The 17-year-old teenager Esperança Vitória did not want to. She gave up and moved away from art for more than 20 years despite her parents making crafts until the last breath of strength.
Until she reached 38 years old, without feeling personally and professionally fulfilled and having embarked on what many in her native village (and probably the 17 year old girl would have laughed at the idea) said it was the impossible and one '' shooting in the foot '': saying goodbye to a stable job of 14 years, in exchange for the unsustainability of handicrafts.
You are crazy, many said. But I had always hope... because I knew that it was necessary to revolutionize the cycle, to end the theory that "it has always been this way and it will continue to be this way."
- No. Here is the moment when I say: it has always been like this, and this is where it ends.
Because it's time to end the reason for handicrafts die in the hands of the wisest: it is time to value the things we have, before we lose them.
Proving everyone how ancestral arts can coexist in a modern world. And that each piece provides a reason for the existence of the next generation of artisans.
Today's handicrafts are more '' expensive '' than in the past, yes. Because it has to be. Because it is not possible to continue working in the same way as in the past, in a parallel market that took us to where we are today: on the verge of oblivion. And in us, consumers, there must also be this responsibility to know that living with less is actually having more. That investing in quality is really saving.
Although there is a greater investment in each piece, there will also be less waste, more intention and love behind everything we do, have and are.
We have to understand that nowadays we don't buy mere products: we buy stories, emotions, brands with life values that are in line with our owns. This is true luxury. And you don't have to be rich to have it.