Craft

Craft is a form of creativity that usually involves making a functional object through skill, manual labour, and mastery of a material. Traditional crafts include pottery, weaving, blacksmithing, woodworking, glassblowing, embroidery, wood carving, and jewellery making. Unlike the fine arts, which have historically been valued primarily for aesthetic and conceptual significance, craft was long regarded as an applied activity connected to usefulness and everyday use. The boundary between craft and high art has been mobile throughout history and has been repeatedly renegotiated. The Arts and Crafts Movement, founded in Britain in the late nineteenth century by William Morris, championed the value of handwork as a counter to impersonal factory production. In the twentieth century the Bauhaus sought to unite art, craft, and industrial design. Ukrainian culture possesses an exceptionally rich craft heritage, from Petrykivka decorative painting and Hutsul ceramics to embroidery, pysanka egg decoration, and weaving, all of which form an important part of national identity. Today the boundaries between craft and contemporary art are increasingly blurred, and mastery of material is once again valued as a full-fledged artistic statement.