The art versus craft debate is almost as old as the question: “What is art?” Boiled down to its gnarly, still disputable essence, art is created to make us think and feel, while craft is made to be used. A painting on a wall makes us ponder, whereas knitted scarves keep us warm, ceramic vases hold flowers upright and embroidered tablecloths cover tables.
Historically, art was made only by middle- and upper-class men. Outliers such as women, the working-class and minorities didn’t have the time or resources to learn to paint professionally. There were social as well as financial barriers: women weren’t allowed to study life drawing at the Royal Academy until the 1890s for fear they would see nudity. Craft, on the other hand, has always been available to more people because making something useful is valued in daily life, even if its price tag is far below that of a work of art.
I’m interested in the difference between art and craft because I’ve written novels featuring both. My best-known book, Girl With a Pearl Earring, is about a painting. On the craft front, I’ve written about weaving (The Lady and the Unicorn), quilting (The Last Runaway), embroidery (A Single Thread), and glass (my new novel The Glassmaker). Women in my books have made tapestries, quilts, cushions and beads. Although often decorative, most have uses: tapestries make rooms less draughty, quilts warm sleepers, cushions soften hard chairs.
Given that it’s useful to have a warmer room or bed, or a softer seat, why is it that a cushion is worth less than a painting of a cushion? Is it because they’re often made by outliers? Is women’s output worth less than men’s? Working-class people’s less than that of the middle-class?
And who decides that worth? Who decides whether something is art or craft – the maker or the viewer? Most people seem to accept that if someone says they’ve made art, it’s art. If Martin Creed sticks a ball of Blu-Tack to the wall and calls it art, we accept his definition. (Something can be bad art and still be art.)
But craft is sometimes reclassified. A famous recent example are the Gee’s Bend quilts. Gee’s Bend is a small African American community in Alabama where women have been making quilts for over a century, constructed from used fabrics such as work clothes and feed sacks. The quilts have a striking improvisational aesthetic, colourful and geometric.
In 1998, art collector William Arnett visited the village and bought hundreds of quilts that made their way into art museums across the US. Quilts that had originally been sewn for use on beds were now hung on walls and called art. The first major exhibition of Gee’s Bend quilts toured the US in 2002. Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times called the quilts “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced”.
Note the gender of the gatekeepers (the collector and the critic) and the makers (the quilters). The women of Gee’s Bend didn’t at first perceive their work as art, but men did. Now, of course, the quilters do – and who can blame them? Art sells for much more than craft.
I prefer to think there’s a third way. If you place art and craft at either end of a spectrum, the blurry middle ground – the Lib Dem territory – is where people (women!) make things and are not patronised for it. The language is starting to change, too, which is a good sign. “Crafter” – a word that makes my skin crawl – is being superseded by the vaguer but more muscular “maker”. The Swedish have even merged the two concepts into one word: konsthantverk, or artcraft. In Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, a show currently at Tate Britain in London, some works using craft media have been included: Mary Delany’s botanical collage, Mary Knowles’s embroidery.
I’ve been personally involved in two reclassifications from craft to that middle ground. On 24 September 1799, Ann Bell sewed the last stitch on an embroidery sampler. She had carefully cross-stitched on a square of linen the alphabet in both capital and lower case letters, as well as the numbers 1 to 14, her name and date, and a green, gold and beige border. Her stitches are a bit uneven, and her lower case alphabet starts large and gets smaller as she runs out of space, breaking off after W. I framed it and hung it on a wall in our house. Not art, not craft, but konsthantverk. Thank you, Sweden.
I learned to quilt when I was researching The Last Runaway. After learning about Gee’s Bend quilts, I made one in that style as a homage, and gave it to my son when he went to university, assuming he would use it on his bed. He hung it on the wall. Is it art or craft or artcraft? He doesn’t care – what matters is that I made it.
• Tracy Chevalier’s new novel The Glassmaker (Borough Press) is published on 12 September
