CRAFT

A craft is a skill, especially involving practical arts. It may refer to a trade or particular art.

The term is often used as part of a longer word (and also in the plural). For example, a craft-brother is a fellow worker in a particular trade and a craft-guild is, historically, a guild of workers in the same trade. See some further examples below.

The term is often used to describe the family of artistic practices within the decorative arts that traditionally are defined by their relationship to functional or utilitarian products (such as sculptural forms in the vessel tradition) or by their use of such natural media as wood, clay, glass, textiles, and metal. Crafts practiced by independent artists working alone or in small groups are often referred to as studio craft. Studio craft includes studio pottery, metal work, weaving, wood turning and other forms of wood working, glass blowing, and glass art.

A master craftsman or master tradesman (sometimes called only master or grandmaster, German: Meister) was a member of a guild. In the European guild system, only master were allowed to be members of the guild.

An aspiring master would have to pass through the career chain from apprentice to journeyman before he could be elected to become a master craftsman. He would then have to produce a sum of money and a masterpiece before he could actually join the guild. If the masterpiece was not accepted by the masters, he was not allowed to join the guild, possibly remaining a journeyman for the rest of his life.

Studio craft though it takes many forms, can be thought of in general as the tendency to practice craft methodology in an environment similar if not equivalent to an artists studio. Viewed in comparison to the practice of traditional craft which tends to generate craft objects out of necessity or for ceremonial use Studio Craft represents a contemporary shift from traditional craft by producing craft objects at the whim of the maker or intended owner and which tend to be at best only desirable for use and sometimes outright in opposition to it.

Because studio craft dissents from objects of pure necessity studio craft inspires significant comparisons to works of studio art which also tend to be made specifically to stimulate. It is often argued by contemporary craftspeople that because of studio crafts diminished reliance on objects of necessity the studio craft object becomes more viable for the kind of aesthetic critical theory which occurs in fine art theory