Mass produced items with random variation or defects

There appears to be a social trend of preference for hand made items and old/antique items. This in part seems to be a rebellion against the uniformity of mass-produced items. It appears to me, however, that adding some non-uniformity, variation or defects to mass-produced items is just another engineering challenge. All that is needed is study of what makes objects look handmade (e.g. colour variation, shape variation, cracks, chips, aging) and development of solutions to reproduce these in mass-production setting. Examples of objects: tiles; wooden furniture; etc.