All That Authenticity May Be Getting Old

Major retailers sell vintage or handmade objects, or produce items with that look. Clockwise from top left: artisan-made felt ornaments and a mass-produced mug adorned with an owl, the totem of the crafts movement, both from West Elm; vintage pickling jars sold by Pottery Barn; wooden tops made from reclaimed railroad ties and vintage toys from India, sold by CB2; the Versailles chair, linen pillow covers made to look like vintage grain sacks and reproduction machinery gears, all from Restoration Hardware.
By EMILY WEINSTEIN
Published: October 26, 2011
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LIKE so many others her age, Casey Barber, 33, furnished her home with affordable basics from major retailers, pieces like that requisite “Ikea table that is still making the rounds after all these years,” she said.
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Evan Sklar/The New York Times
Casey Barber collects handmade art posters, which hang in her stairwell.
But when it came to accessories, Ms. Barber, a writer and the editor of the Web site Good.Food.Stories., took care to search out the unique and handmade — things that communicated her personality and a certain sense of authenticity.

One of her prized possessions, which hangs in the stairwell of the house she shares with her husband in Clifton, N.J., is a graphic print by the small studio JHill Design, depicting the bridges of Pittsburgh, where Ms. Barber grew up. She also has a number of other art posters bought on Etsy, the crafts Web site, along with a few antique maps, a collection of postcards from the 1940s and ’50s and a cardboard bust of a bison that she bought at a shop in Chicago that sells antiques and quirky home accessories.

But recently, all this authenticity has begun to wear on her. Objects she once would have valued for their uniqueness have begun to seem like a “design uniform,” Ms. Barber said, now that the popularity of “one of a kind” things has become so widespread.

Even the major retailers have gotten into the game. West Elm is promoting items by Etsy vendors, Restoration Hardware has commissioned artisans to design products that look antique, and Pottery Barn is selling vintage pieces like pickling jars from Hungary and pillow covers made from old grain sacks. Even CB2, the playful, modern sibling of Crate and Barrel, is peddling a series of vintage and limited-edition products called One of a Finds.

“If you spend enough time looking at this stuff” — objects that are vintage, handmade or that just appropriate those looks — “you get overloaded pretty quickly,” Ms. Barber said.

How much authenticity is too much? It’s an oddly philosophical question, given the subject matter, but one that might occur to anyone confronted with the deluge of vintage and artisanal products now available online and through mass-market retailers.

Put another way, have we finally reached a saturation point, where the “authentic” loses its eternal quality and becomes just another fad?

“It really is something we think about a lot,” said Vanessa Holden, West Elm’s creative director, who was formerly the editor in chief of Martha Stewart Living magazine. “It’s a word that is thrown around way too easily. When we talk about authenticity, we’re very, very serious about getting as close to the source as we can, in terms of either the craft or the execution.”

A year ago, West Elm, the modern home furnishings retailer, which was already working with artisans and designers, formed a partnership with Etsy, the online marketplace that has been the engine and communal center of the all-things-handmade movement.

West Elm now features products by Etsy vendors in its catalogs and on its Web site, and hosts events called We Heart Handmade Art, which provide the vendors physical space where they can sell their wares. And on Dec. 1, the retailer will host an Etsy night at all its stores nationwide, where customers can create their own Christmas ornaments for trees that will be donated to local charities.

While there may be untold branding benefits, West Elm does not profit from the Etsy sales. Customers buy directly from the vendors, and there is no cut for the retailer. “It’s really about adding those diverse voices to our mix,” Ms. Holden said.

Meanwhile, Restoration Hardware is working with a number of artisans to create vintage reproductions that can be seen, along with a variety of other vintage-looking pieces, in the company’s 616-page fall catalog, which features magazine-style profiles of the creators.

Pottery Barn, which, like West Elm, is owned by Williams-Sonoma, sells vintage items from around the world as part of a collection called “Found.” Similarly, CB2 offers its own selection of vintage pieces, like hand-carved toys from India, as well as a line of items called “Hand-Touched” — tied-dyed rugs, for example, or ottomans swathed in sweater-like knitted covers — with handmade elements. (Birds, a totem of the crafts movement, are big at CB2 as well, where they can be found holding candles and printed on bed linens and pillow covers.)

Those vintage toys and handmade furnishings are one way Marta Calle, CB2’s director, has tried to temper the company’s identification with an aesthetic of hard edges and high gloss. “When I first came on the brand, it was a little cold, a little sterile,” said Ms. Calle, who joined the company in 2004. This is her answer, she said, to the question of “how do you add texture to the store?”

Needless to say, many of the artisans have benefited as well.

Jason Lewis, 36, one of the craftsmen hired by CB2, was making furniture to order at his shop in Chicago before he began working with the company two years ago.

Since then, he has hand-built an edition of 200 American black walnut side tables, which the company sells for about $400 each, roughly half of what Mr. Lewis would have had to charge if he were building them one at a time in his shop, he said. All were made over the course of a summer, in a kind of artisanal assembly line he created in his studio.

“I felt like an employee at a Ford plant,” he said, “drilling 1,200 holes in a day or two.”