Handmade means made by a person rather than a machine. Handmade paper, handmade shoes, entirely handmade.
It is a selling point and a claim about method rather than quality — a handmade thing is not automatically better, though it is usually dearer. The term is barely regulated, so handmade often means hand-finished. Note handcrafted, which claims more; and that the older sense of the word simply distinguished work done by hand from work done by water or steam power.
1adjectivehandmadeMade by a person rather than a machine.
“She sells handmade jewellery at the weekend market.”
handmade is a quality of making.
Hand plus made, a plain compound. It became worth saying only when machines made most things, so the word is younger than the practice by a very long way.
From hand + made.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA