Craft might be seen as a domestic task, unlike art, a commercial, creative, or philosophical pursuit; thus, making friendship bracelets is craft, but intricate gold bracelets are art. However, this nuance is culturally contingent. In the Renaissance, sculpture was an art form done by specialised artists like Michelangelo, who were trained as painters, sculptors, and architects, three disciplines of fine art, as it may be defined today. Yet there is evidence that in Ancient Greece, sculptors and ceramicists may have been enslaved, of the lowest social class. The Muses were the divine patrons of the arts, and they represented music, poetry, and literature, which have more recently been tucked into the defined category of 'literature' rather than of 'art'.
"Women’s work is never art"
In spite of these differences, there is one constant throughout how we have defined art, and how we have defined craft: women’s work is never art. Whether you look at Penelope on her loom, or 'needleworking' in the 19th century, women’s labour over intricate designs on useful household items has always been diminished as craft, not art. Like many debates, this ultimately comes down to a question of what art actually is, and who defines it.
While women’s 'education' would revolve around domestic tasks, often including pursuits such as quilt-making, embroidery, and music, upper-class men were educated in art schools, taught the disciplines of their time that would produce work praised for encouraging philosophical introspection, political commentary, or define their period of history. Women and people of lower classes were financially and socially denied access to an artist’s education, and so, to the spaces, communities, and resources that enabled one to produce art rather than craft.
The redefining of terms and the revaluation of history has allowed women, often posthumously, to be recognised as great artists, not just skilled craftspeople. The Gee’s Bend quilts were produced by women, sold as products, but reclaimed as art and exhibited; Mary Queen of Scots’ embroidery has been reviewed as a metaphor for her troubles, like a crowned ginger cat playing with a mouse - her relationship with Elizabeth I, rather than as an unimaginative recreation of a scene she once saw. The controversy, though, stems from the fact that this redefinition often requires the implicit sign-off from male artists and critics, rather than being recognised as implicitly necessary.
"Modern art movements, from the turn of the 20th century, have also challenged traditional modes of art and their dominance in the art world"
Today, the very processes that excluded women from art are being overwritten; historically, there was a relationship between craft and production of goods that lent value to tailoring, lacemaking, weaving, and knitting, all crafts that were laboured over, but today, can be done by machine. There is a much closer affiliation between craft and value, where crafts are seen as an art form, even when they are innocuously intended simply as craft. Modern art movements, from the turn of the 20th century, have also challenged traditional modes of art and their dominance in the art world, taking traditional crafts and bringing them to the forefront of the fine art world. In children’s education, arts and crafts sessions involve making things out of egg and cereal boxes as well as painting, encouraging creativity across the board.