January 2, 2026
Craft built the world.
The internet forgot it.
Why I Founded Ceàrd.
Ceàrd sits at the intersection of culture, craft, and innovation. Not as a trend. As a correction. Ceàrd comes from Scottish Gaelic. It means craft.
It’s pronounced like beard, with a K.
by John Agnew
Founder & CEO, Ceàrd
Organic farmer. Cider maker. Beekeeper. Woodworker. Chef.
here are over a billion makers worldwide. People who carve, stitch, weld, cook, bake, grow, dye, ferment, shape, repair, and build. This is not a niche. It is the oldest form of human work. And yet almost none of our modern systems are built for them.
Only a small fraction of makers earn a living wage. Most are exhausted, scattered across platforms, and forced to contort their work into formats that reward attention over ability. The maker economy is massive, but it is broken.
I built Ceàrd because I’ve lived on both sides of that fracture.
here are over a billion makers worldwide. People who carve, stitch, weld, cook, bake, grow, dye, ferment, shape, repair, and build.
This is not a niche. It is the oldest form of human work. And yet almost none of our modern systems are built for them.
I built Ceàrd because I’ve lived on both sides of that fracture.
Only a small fraction of makers earn a living wage. Most are exhausted, scattered across platforms, and forced to contort their work into formats that reward attention over ability. The maker economy is massive, but it is broken.
The Beginning of Making
The Serpent Stone, one of the three Pictish stones.
I grew up around people who made things. The kind who fixed instead of replaced. If something broke, it wasn’t a failure. It was an invitation to understand it better.
Being of Irish and Scottish heritage, I grew up steeped in culture. I learned the lowland bagpipes, studied Irish, and became obsessed with ancient peoples across the globe, especially the Picts. Not the blue-painted caricatures, but what they actually left behind. Symbol stones carved in a language we still cannot fully read. Metalwork so precise it still feels contemporary.
A people remembered not for conquest, but for craft.
That idea lodged early. A people can be remembered by what they make.
When I was fourteen, my parents worried I was drifting too close to my older brother’s punk rock orbit and sent me to Outward Bound. Three weeks of wilderness survival. I was the only kid who hadn’t been to juvenile hall.
Everything familiar was stripped away. I learned how to find water, build fire, trap, forage, and read the ground for clues. Making wasn’t about hobbies or aesthetics. It was about survival. Every motion mattered. Every material carried meaning that couldn’t be Googled.
At sixteen, I crossed the ocean to Lyme Regis, England. Among potters, weavers, blacksmiths, and painters, something clicked. I was surrounded by people who lived by their hands. People chasing mastery, not attention.
I learned to center clay. To listen to wood before cutting it. Every craft had its own language built on humility, rhythm, and respect. When you make something slowly and with intention, it reflects who you are.
That lesson followed me everywhere. Studying design in France and Chicago. Building global campaigns at Apple and Nike. Travel only reinforced it. Monks painting thangkas in Tibet. Hunting with the Kayapó in the Amazon, carving bows by hand. Different cultures. Same truth.
Craft is humanity’s oldest conversation.
Years later, I found myself in Denali, Alaska, on my final exam after a year training as a bushcraft instructor. Two weeks in the wild. No food. No sleeping bag. No tent. Just a knife, a rucksack, a short length of rope, and a steel canteen.
When you haven’t eaten for eight days, when sleep comes in cold, broken hours spent feeding a fire and listening for bears and moose, when your hands split from the cold and fire becomes the difference between continuing or stopping, suffering stops being abstract. You push anyway. And you learn quickly that making isn’t a pastime. It’s intelligence. It’s how humans survive.
Ceàrd began there. Not as an app. As a way of seeing.
A log on the curb isn’t trash. It’s a spoon. Clay underfoot isn’t dirt. It’s a vessel in disguise. The world isn’t finished. It’s full of beginnings.
What the Modern World Got Wrong
When I put down roots on a small farm in Portland, my making expanded again. Farming. Cheesemaking. Fermenting cider. Natural dyes. Beekeeping. Basketry. Foraging.
I won’t pretend it’s romantic. Farming is unforgiving. Weather turns without warning. Irrigation fails. Bees sting. Blood is lost clearing invasive blackberry bushes. Clay soil fights every shovel. Orchards demand years of care before they yield anything.
That friction is the point.
I learned through books, videos, conversations, and patient teachers. And that’s when the problem became impossible to ignore.
The modern internet treats making like content, not knowledge. Entertainment, not inheritance.
The platforms we rely on weren’t built for makers. They were built for scale, speed, and advertising. They reward virality over mastery. Output over process. Noise over nuance.
The loudest voices rise. The deepest knowledge sinks.
Quiet masters disappear. Patient teachers are buried. Decades of refinement are punished for not playing the algorithm.
Craft gets flattened. Tradition becomes aesthetic. Skill becomes a trend.And yet the desire to make hasn’t gone away
Makers don’t want dopamine hits. They want dignity. They want tools that empower, not exploit. They want partners, not platforms.
BUILDING CeàRD
Ceàrd is a home for makers. A living ecosystem for people who create with their hands, their hearts, and their imagination.
It’s not just a feed. It’s a place. A digital atelier. A quiet workshop.
A garden where work grows at its own pace.
Ceàrd bridges education, commerce, and community into sustainable growth. Every decision is intentional, down to the color itself.
Our design palette comes from natural plant dyes. Indigo. Madder. Sumac. Walnut. Goldenrod and more. Colors shaped by time, patience, and chemistry, not presets. They shift in light. They carry imperfection. They feel alive.
We chose vellum instead of white. Iron gall ink instead of black. Warmth instead of contrast. Texture instead of polish.
Technology doesn’t have to feel cold. It can feel like a hand-thrown bowl. A wool sweater. A song hummed while sanding a table. The interface breathes. It moves at a human pace. Designed around rhythm, not urgency. Care, not extraction.
CeàRD is grounded in a real place
Over the last months, Ceàrd has moved from idea to reality. Our Ceàrd Studio is located in Old Town. Makers are already gathering. Teaching. Selling. Supporting one another.
Old Town is where Portland began. Rail lines, docks, warehouses. Work moved hand to hand here. Skill was learned through doing.
My ambition is simple. Make Portland the maker capital of the United States. Not through branding, but through infrastructure.
Ceàrd is the anchor. A physical studio paired with a digital ecosystem. Proof that a maker-first economy can thrive when care comes first.
Old Town is our foundation. Portland is our proving ground.
This isn’t about building another platform. It’s about rebuilding trust between people and the tools they use.
We’re giving makers tools that honor their pace. Tools to teach, learn, and earn without bending themselves to algorithms. An economy that values depth over clicks and mastery over metrics.
Progress doesn’t mean faster. It means better. It means care.
When others chase scale, we chase community. When others build algorithms, we build atmosphere. When others design for consumption, we design for connection.
The world doesn’t need another app. It needs something built to last.
That’s why I built Ceàrd.