• Details, Monday, July 12, 2010 1 PM

Surveying the American marketplace, Adam Sacks finds that the artisanal movement -- from craft beers to pickles to handbags to bicycles -- has become our "national consumer religion." And it's not just coastal hipsters anymore, either, who are buying and purveying handcrafted items. Who'd have thunk that the heart of Texas would produce Tito's Handmade Vodka?

As with every marketing story nowadays, there's a "hard-times" twist. "When everything is falling apart, it helps to know how to put things together," Sacks writes. "And isn't that the secret message of so much artisanal longing? That when everything goes to hell, we'll all become potters and learn to make bread."

Sidebars to the main story -- itself no flimsy machine-made product, the author assures us -- include "Time Line: Great Moments In Craft Culture" from Betsy Ross to the Limelight Marketplace; "20 Artisanal Terms You Need To Know"; "Handmade In The USA"; "Accidental Artisans: Inmates, Hippies, And Fundamentalists" and "The Artisanal Arsenal."

Read the whole story at Details »