It just so happens that craft is still considered a step below contemporary art. And although you could undoubtedly challenge this thesis, since the boundaries of contemporary art have long been blurred, the hierarchy remains palpable.
Everyone wants either something new and loud, or something abstract and useless. And what lies beneath that? Often, emptiness. We are forgetting about traditions and techniques dating back to ancient times, about knowledge that is transmitted through the hands, not through algorithms.
True craft restores our sense of reality—that lost ability to feel matter. Look around: not long ago, steam, coal, and metal transformed the economy, and today machines and artificial intelligence are liberating humans from labor. In this paradigm, the familiar pyramid, with 'high art' at the top, ideas and concepts below, and craft—archaic and seemingly unnecessary—at the base, is gradually losing its meaning. Therefore, it is quite logical that this foundation is beginning to rapidly separate, forming its own space of aesthetic values.
You might not believe it, but even at the end of the 19th century, there were those who foresaw the danger of this loss. William Morris, inspired by the ideas of John Ruskin, created the Arts & Crafts movement, striving to return a soul to objects. For Morris, craft was not an 'inferior' art but a manifestation of human dignity, where every object is the result of a dialogue between the master and the material.
This line stretched from Bernard Leach to the masters of the Vienna Secession, but imperceptibly, the era of modernism arrived. An era of rationality, systems, and formulas. The craftsman gave way to the designer, the handmade trace to the blueprint, the unique to the mass-produced. As a reaction to changes in society, a new hierarchy of artistic thinking formed. A justified protest emerged, and masters began to move away from direct work with material towards abstraction.
Today, art is increasingly turning into a stream of data. Images are created without touch, forms are born from algorithms. Now clay, paper, or metal seem like too slow a medium for meaning.
Indeed, an object created by hand will very soon become the main deficit of digital civilization. That foundation, which once separated from the old pyramid and was considered 'inferior,' is now laying the groundwork for a new structure of values, in which craft materials are not just materials, but carriers of memory, capable of restoring the sensation of life amidst the machines we have created.
This is precisely the approach of the Japanese master Kunimasa Aoki, the creator of 'quiet art,' which doesn't need to be seen—it is enough for it to be made. It is almost a Zen practice, where the master dissolves into the form, and the form becomes a shadow of presence.
One can cite many examples where art is not opposed to craft but is born from it.
And so we return to the question: when does craft become art? The answer is simple: right now. This is not nostalgia for the past. It is a search for new meaning—in human imperfection, slow labor, and respect for the material world.
'Small forms' (poetry, craft, restoration) are becoming the foundation of that new pyramid, where what is valued is not loudness but expressiveness, not effect but the presence of spirit.
When we observe a master working with wood or dyeing fabric, we see not just manual labor—we see an act of meditation in which matter and thought unite. The hand, as was originally intended by nature, once again becomes an extension of consciousness, and the object—a form of existence.
Craft ceases to serve art. It becomes its source. And this, one might say, is a form of protest in itself.
