We are all makers again.

Andrea del Verrocchio ran one of the busiest botteghe in Florence in the 1460s. If you've never heard the word, a bottega was a workshop that opened onto the street, where people made a bit of everything: paintings, bronze, marble, even armour on some occasions. Leonardo da Vinci learned there. So did Perugino, who would go on to teach Raphael.

Put makers in a room with amazing things to learn and play with, and they do great things. As time went on, skills were shared and picked up from one another, from bronze to machines to paint. And the imagination in rooms like that didn't stop at masterpieces. It painted wedding chests, dressed the city for its festivals, made armour for a joust. Art fuelled the Renaissance, but more importantly, it was part of how people lived, and it made living a little better.

It's happening again. As artificial intelligence gets better and cheaper, the line between an artist, a builder, a creator, whatever the title is, gets blurry. We are all makers again. And when anyone can make anything, what matters is the oldest stuff we have: curiosity, imagination, a little bit of delusion, and most of all, each other, the connections in between.

So we're building a bottega of our own. We make little things that bring people closer, get a few more laughs out of an ordinary day, or add a little bit of romance to life. And we're building a community, so if you're an artist, builder, creator maker, you belong. Experiment with the tools we use, make something fun and meaningful with them, and show the world a little bit of love. 🤍