Bespoked and the precarious handmade
I write on here about Bespoked most years. I always feel a real variety of emotions about the event, from anxiety to excitement. This year, though, there was a real undercurrent that I haven’t felt before in the five years I’ve been going to Bespoked. That was financial precarity.
It’s always the elephant in the room at these shows, but it hung heavy in the air in Manchester. It came up with most every maker I talked to. Maybe only 50% of the exhibitors were framebuilders at this years show. Of those, there were only a few of us who build bikes full time. Of those remaining builders, many were exhibiting for the first time, while dozens of builders who’d exhibited at previous shows had gone, closed up and moved onto more financially stable things. Even established builders making wildly exciting, technically superb work are struggling to make a basic living selling bikes for less than many companies’ mass produced bikes.
Then new framebuilders are stepping into this market at a time when the meaning of making is ever more diluted. Inexplicably, there were companies exhibiting bikes and accessories at the UK handbuilt bike show made in factories in China and Taiwan.
I’m sure I’ll catch a lot of flak for this: “All bikes are handmade!” But we all know what we mean when we say handmade bikes, and importing from overseas factories ain’t that. You can tell what handmade is when all the tiny companies and one person makers are super keen to tell you where they’re based, how their local riding changes their building approach, what tools or processes they use. You can tell by all the proud signs, like on Wizard Works’ stand “MADE IN LONDON”, that it is a product of localism, of self-actualisation: the people exhibiting the stuff, made the stuff. A production line, whether it’s in West London like Brompton, or in Taiwan like Surly, is quite a different thing compared to a builder in a workshop. Not a bad thing, to be clear, but a different thing. So in this climate of massive financial insecurity for the UK handbuilt scene, mass produced imported goods companies showed their wares and captured a certain amount of the precious media spotlight and the glow of association with the handmade.
My partner is a furniture maker. That’s another craft pushing against the weight of globalised mass production with design creativity, local, sustainable timber and determination. Just as all framebuilders have a scrap drawer of offcuts, ready to be turned into particular thingys or doodahs as the project inspires them, furniture makers keep little offcuts of boards, have random pieces of wood gifted them by local woodland managers, enough to make a unique handle or section of dresser. These elements are part of what define a handmade item: the serendipity, the spontaneous designing based on materials to hand and the care and thought to do so. These are the elements that fall to the wayside in an industrialised factory environment.
This blurring of the meaning of handmade, combined with escalating costs, feels like a new low for frame building. Already the economics of building means taking on apprentices to learn the trade is a pretty remote option for most when struggling to simply pay the bills is front and centre.
As always, Bespoked was a great showcase of some incredible work from skilled makers. I talked to so many enthusiastic and knowledgable people, exhibitors and visitors alike. I was humbled to win the Peer’s choice award, jointly with Jim from Craft Bikes.
Bespoked was amazing. Bespoked was foreboding. I don’t know.
Photo by Alexej Fedorov