How things are made
Handmade, hand-finished, hand-painted and small batch are used almost interchangeably in British shops, and they do not mean the same thing. Here is what each one actually describes, and what it tells you about the object in front of you.
At a glance
Handmade: formed by hand, with hand tools, by a named person or a small studio
Hand-painted: the decoration is applied by hand, though the blank may be made another way
Hand-finished: the shape is produced by machine or mould, then completed by hand
Small batch: made in limited runs, often on specialist equipment, by a studio of a few people
Handcrafted: no agreed meaning in UK retail, and no legal definition
Why the words matter
There is no UK legal definition of handmade in retail. A shop can print it on almost anything and face no consequence, which is why the word has thinned out. It now appears on objects pressed by the thousand and on objects genuinely shaped by one person over an afternoon, and the customer is asked to tell the difference from a photograph.
The useful information is not the word. It is the method. Once you know how something was made, the word becomes unnecessary.
Handmade
At its strictest, handmade means the object was formed by human hands using hand tools. A hand-bound book, a pouch cut and stitched at a bench, a leaf pressed flat between sheets over several weeks. Machines may still be involved, because a sewing machine or a press is a tool rather than a production line, but the shaping decisions belong to a person.
The test is simple. If you can name the person, the town and the bench, the word is probably earned. If you cannot, treat it as decoration.
Hand-painted
Hand-painted describes decoration, not construction. An object may be cast, pressed or cut by machine and then painted by hand, stroke by stroke. The painting is real work and it is why no two pieces match, but the body underneath was not shaped by hand, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise.
An honest listing names both halves: how the object was formed, and how it was decorated. A hand-painted piece is no less worth having. It is simply a different claim from handmade.
Hand-finished
Hand-finished covers the large middle ground. The main form is produced by machine, mould or press, and a person completes it: edging leather, trimming a seam, burnishing, assembling hardware, checking and correcting. A great deal of good Japanese leather work sits here, and there is nothing lesser about it. A wallet with fifteen machine-sewn seams and hand-set edges will usually outlast one sewn entirely by hand at the same price.
Small batch and studio production
Small batch describes scale rather than method. A letterpress workshop in Brussels running two hundred sets of cards on a press from another century is small batch. So is a paper studio in south-west France pressing plants gathered that season. The equipment may be specialist and old, the run is short, and the person who made it would recognise the object if it came back.
What none of these words guarantee
None of them promise quality. A badly made handmade object is still badly made. None of them promise ethics, because a word on a label says nothing about who was paid what. And none of them promise scarcity, since a studio can make the same design for fifteen years.
What they should promise is accuracy. If a shop cannot tell you which of these applies to a given object, that is worth noticing.
How Ourooh uses them
Every object in the shop comes from an independent maker or a small studio, and each product page states the method as it actually is. Handmade appears only where it is verified for that piece. Where something is hand-painted, cast, letterpress printed or hand-bound, the page says so and leaves it there.
Maker, town, material and method are listed on every page for the same reason. They are checkable. The adjective is not.
Does handmade mean no machines were used?
No. It means a person is doing the shaping and the judging rather than a production line. Hand tools, sewing machines and presses are all normal in handmade work.
Is hand-painted the same as handmade?
No. Hand-painted refers only to the decoration. The object underneath may have been cast, pressed or machine-formed, and an honest listing will tell you which.
Why do two pieces of the same design look different?
Because a hand does not repeat itself exactly. Ink sits differently, dye settles differently, pressed plants are never identical. Variation is evidence of the method rather than a fault.
Are handmade objects always more expensive?
Not always. A pocket notebook made in a small Japanese paper mill can cost less than a mass-produced one sold in an airport. Price follows material, time and scale rather than the word on the label.