The guilt of the unnecessary. A visual analysis of objects embedding justifications and futures imaginaries of craft-makers

Objects are never merely functional: they carry values, moral orientations, and imaginaries of desirable futures. Contemporary “sustainable objects,” for instance, promise ethical consumption and ecological responsibility, yet their moral status remains deeply contested. A critical dimension of sustainability lies precisely in its capacity to alleviate guilt associated with ongoing production and consumption, often without fundamentally challenging dominant capitalist logics. In this sense, sustainability may operate less as a rupture and more as a moral accommodation that enables continuity rather than transformation. This paper investigates this ambivalence through contemporary craft practices and theorizes an emerging moral-affective tension we term the “guilt of the unnecessary.” This form of guilt captures the unease craft-makers experience when producing new objects and the recurring question of whether such objects are truly necessary, even when making practices are grounded in care, skill, local embeddedness, and ecological concern.