‘Honesty’ – don’t hear much of her these days. ‘Beauty’, well, she crops up frequently. We’re reminded how lucky we are that our culture is graced by her. The ‘It girl’ of art is among us. A new Renaissance is dawning. Unfortunately though, ‘Beauty’ has become horribly standardised. She used to be an ephemeral, abstract concept. Now she’s just a photoshoped image on the cover of your favourite magazine. She’s concrete, and what’s more, she’s conformist.

This isn’t an article about the status of women in our over-sexed society. It’s one about ‘Honesty’ and her demise in British art, design and manufacturing. If there’s one thing the arts can do, it’s narrate a story about the condition of society. And what does our art say about us? That we’re distinctly anti-enlightened. We’ve whored ourselves out to the mass-produced object. We’re sluts for a quick fix, whether it be Sacchi’s latest artist, another badly made dress from Topshop or the new iPhone. That lower case ‘i’, so eminent in today’s society. You think it stands for individual. Look around you. iPod. You pod. He pods too. We all bloody pod.

This is why we need honesty back. To give us a sense of dignity. To remind us that we don’t have to be so orthodox. Conformity has replaced consciousness, but the positive spin tells us the world’s in order. So how do we restore our dignity? Simply revive our ability to make good quality products on our own turf.

Human evolution has been linked to our ability to use tools. But nowadays, a career in any sort of craft is seen as an inferior option. It is the unintelligent choice. Cambridge students are particularly bad at promoting this idea. The result of this attitude though will be our own devolution. Eventually a point will be reached where anything creative has to be out-sourced. Even Britain’s artists seem to be losing the ability to use their hands. Since Andy Warhol, the idea of the factory has allowed artists to get away with all manner of crimes.

During the nineteenth century, a similar situation arose. Ever more preoccupied with prefabrication and mass production, society had virtually annihilated the merit of the individual as craftsman. And now, one century down the line, our ethics and our aesthetics still need to be questioned. The ethical concerns of mass production get a lot of coverage these days. And rightly so. But what about the aesthetical ones?

At the end of the nineteenth century, when industrialisation had reached a critical point, an art movement emerged instigated by William Morris. The Arts and Craft Movement advocated honest use of materials, traditional craftsmanship and economic reform. If our country is going to regain its dignity in the art world, we all need to have the courage to rely on ourselves a bit more. Art students need to be taught how to draw, not how to replicate the abstract expressionists. Children need to be taught how to sew and knit, and that mass-consumerism will never be an effective way of mending a jumper. We could all do well from learning how to grow a few vegetables.

This may seem backwards. But we’ve digested so much force-fed ‘Beauty’ we no longer know what the term really means. The hyper-refined, media obsessed ‘Beauty’ can step aside for the time being. We need the more earthly ‘Honesty’ to remind us of our ability to pick up a pencil, trowel or needle and put our hands to good use.