This is the website of Mackenzie Andersen, written in the interest of preserving the cultural legacy of Andersen Design established by my parents in 1952 on Southport Island, Maine.
My Dad created two company identities Andersen Design which is the wholesale entity and Andersen Studio which is the retail gallery. Dad advised that if I want to be happy in life, to make myself part of something larger than myself, and Andersen Design was that. I was fortunate in having an identity that was not focused on me for most of my life, permitting me to enjoy my life as a wallflower. Now that is no longer the case, as I am the only one left to carry on the history and to place the “means of production” in good hands, where the legacy can be continued by a new generation of artists-designers supported by a foundation that Andersen Design established.
So, preserving this great legacy and finding the ways and means to protect our “means of production” assets which include hundreds of original molds of market-proven slip case designs and original ceramic glaze and body recipes, is on my shoulders alone. This website shall be dedicated to communicating the vision and the need for a community that supports it.
So let us take a “deep dive” into history and begin in Medieval times.
In 2020 I published this story on Medium:
Archaeologists Look At Bronze Age Craft Production in a New Light , drawing upon a paper titled Modeling the Roles of Craft Production in Ancient Political Economies. Journal of Archaeological Research 12, 185–226 (2004). Following is an excerpt :
“Before the 1930s when V. Gordon Childe’ began investigating the role of hand-crafted production from a socio-political angle, archaeologists limited their consideration of specialized manufacture to the economic realm. Childe argued that the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few thwarted the development of a broad market for craft goods and discouraged technological innovation. At the same time, Europe’s itinerant craftspersons were developing dynamic sociopolitical structures that encouraged technological experimentation and scientific progress.
The importance of craft manufacture to long-term economic processes is not denied. What is being challenged is the notion that fabricating items at any scale can be understood as a purely economic activity that solely generates surpluses to meet market demands. Instead, artisans are increasingly envisioned as having actively participated in fashioning the social and cultural worlds they inhabited. How they went about this creative process, and how much freedom they enjoyed in its enactment, are hotly contested. Schortman, E.M., Urban, P.A. Modeling the Roles of Craft Production in Ancient Political Economies. Journal of Archaeological Research 12, 185–226 (2004 pg 196″
The quote above epitomizes the cultural disconnect of the power elite from the people. It is clearly obvious to me that people have more going on in their minds and hearts than just working for a dollar, but this seems to be a revelation to the researchers. What do they think a human being is? Why wouldn’t even a wage slave seek to find meaning in their work beyond the monetary? Especially amount makers?
And yet the entire system run by central management is set up as if that is not so. Never in all my years studying the Maine economic development statutes have I ever found recognition of the work process or social- political meaning mentioned as an attribute of a “quality job”, which is measured by the hierarchy as merely a matter of higher than average wages and benefits. A quality job, by State of Maine standards does not even include opportunity- its just a rigid measure of where ones monetary rewards are located on the totem pole, and no other sort of reward counts for anything. The power elite can’t imagine that the masses are anything other than something crafted by themselves.
Andersen Design defied all of that. My Dad was the Dean of the Akron Art Institute with a secure salay when he decided he liked making ceramics better. That was not a choice based on monetary rewatds. it was a quality of life choice. My Dad would rather spend his life making ceramics!
In that sense Andersen Design is a forerunner of the current workers movement away from the corporate world and into self employment.
