The writer’s meaning is that the presence of defects is a characteristic of hand-made things, while the absence of defects is a characteristic of mass-produced things. So, if you really value hand-made things, you might start to see defects in a positive way — that is, as evidence that the item was made by hand. Another example of a similar, counter-intuitive use of cherish: “Her husband was not handsome. He had a deep scar on his face, and his nose was crooked. But as she grew to love him more and more deeply over the years, she began to cherish these imperfections because they were part of the man she loved.”

Sometimes, defects are cherished as a mark of hand-crafted items. People like to know that their product took time and effort and was not quickly and efficiently produced in a factory. Of course, the defects should be small, and not everyone can afford to buy hand-crafted products, so some of the cherishing might have to do with upper-class snobbery.

In most situations, something having defects or being defective is seen as a negative characteristic. "My new phone is defective!" What this article is saying is that since most new goods are factory produced, the goods do not have any uniqueness because there are no flaws. This causes people to like hand-produced goods because of the small variations (or defects) in the thing that is being crafted. Think about a factory produced table and a handmade one. On the factory produced one, every leg of the table will be exactly like the others. The handmade one will have small variations (or defects) between the size, shape, detail of each table leg. This shows that it was built by an actual human being who spent much time and probably cares about their craft. People cherish the handmade appearance because it is rare with so many factory produced goods these days.