Buying a handmade bed allows the design to be refined
I wanted to talk today about the difference between Mass Produced and Handmade beds. Without running on my ego and saying, "Oh we make everything much much better," it's not about that, it's just the bed is made for the customer so the personal contact to go to a designer, to a craftsman, to a person who knows how to make furniture and beds and to talk with him/her about the design, about the requests and ideas that the customer has. The designer and the bed maker sit there and take on all this information, put it together, make the drawings, show the customer the materials and possibly make some prototype models. I mean, these are all huge benefits for the customer to know. Each handmade bed is a unique piece of furniture and this is a very big benefit for the client. You don't have to compromise on anything, you don't have to compromise on the color, you don't have to compromise on the wood, on the materials, on the comfort and it's just perfectly made for this one person or for these people.
Quality of mass produced versus handmade beds
Another very big benefit of handmade beds made for our customers is in the long-term quality. We are often in a state of mind where we have to buy everything here and now. We go to the shop, we see it, we pay for it, we take it home and we sacrifice through that a lot of things like quality. Yes you have a quick buy and your bed is immediately in the next maybe 5 days, 7 days depending how quickly it is delivered in... Whatever has to be done quickly and cheaply and just to be delivered to Europe and if you mention their beds you can buy beds now for £200, £300, £400 under £1,000 that is incredible! Just the materials and how much work that's going into it so yeah really there is a big gap when you consider they people paid 20p per hour or sometimes even per day. It's really really sad that we have this society of cheap and impulse buying. We're supporting this abuse of people in other countries. Children who are working very cheaply and whole families who are in a factory from the morning until the night just to survive in that country. It's a very sad, very sad subject and every time that we buy something quickly, mass-produced from those countries we should really think what we're doing there.
Handmade in the UK
There was a time that this was really important to some people but by and by this seems to have be forgotten. There are some fantastic furniture makers in the UK. If you look around these people are so talented and skillful. They can make such beautiful piece of handmade bespoke furniture like in our workshops at Robinson House Studio. For us the most important part is to enjoy the design and to enjoy the satisfaction of the client. Yes it costs more but you get an absolute premium product only made for you and absolutely made for you the customer. I find it quite sad that there is a time in this country where craftsmen rarely take pride in what they've build. It's so much as if that tradition is being lost somewhere. I think people actually don't realize that they can actually go out and have a bespoke bed commissioned for them. I think we're missing a little bit of education, education in the sense that products like furniture like beds and also like clothes and other products and we could have really beautiful things just made for ourselves often without investing so much more than we're paying anyway for a mass-produced product. There are places that unfortunately we're often not giving ourselves time to research and that has many different reasons so everybody is busy with his life and if it is a bed or a chair or a table, everything has to be quickly quickly, I see it I want it now. The process which before the industrial revolution began that you go to a carpenter and you tell him what you want and he begins to find the wood and make the design and build the piece of furniture. The time that goes into handcrafting the furniture is less and less acceptable for many people. I have experienced very often that clients comes with requests for a beautiful bed and design and would like to have it yesterday. That is impossible, that is just impossible. Everything needs time if you want to make something well with a very good quality.
