What does arts and crafts mean?

Art and craft usually refers to the plastic arts that beautify the living objects and the living environment. It is characterized by the combination of material production and the creation of beauty, with practicality as the main purpose and aesthetic characteristics.　　One of the plastic arts. Various kinds of artifacts made by art skills are combined with utility and appreciation value. Therefore, it usually has a dual nature: it is both a material product and has different degrees of spiritual aesthetic. As a material product, it reflects a certain era, a certain society's material and cultural production level; as a spiritual product, its visual image (shape, color, decoration) and reflects the aesthetic of a certain era. Generally divided into two categories: First, daily crafts, that is, after decorative processing of the life of the actual products, such as some dyeing and weaving, ceramic craft, furniture craft, etc.; Second, furnishing crafts, that is, dedicated to the appreciation of the furnishings, such as some ivory carvings, jade carvings, decorative paintings and so on. China's arts and crafts production earlier, such as the Neolithic era has been colored pottery, before the Shang Dynasty has been engraved white pottery, the Shang Dynasty has been jade, etc., realistic modeling and patterning techniques that show a strong practicality and art. Their production, often due to the historical period, geographical environment, economic conditions, cultural and technical level, national habits and aesthetic point of view of the different styles and characteristics.　　Arts and crafts is one of the plastic arts. It is a kind of spatial comprehensive art integrating decoration, painting and sculpture. Arts and crafts are various kinds of artifacts made by art skills which are combined with utility and have appreciation value. It is generated by the practical requirements of people's life, and has a very close relationship with people's daily life. Chinese arts and crafts have a long history, is a bright pearl in China's cultural treasury, in the international reputation. Arts and crafts originated in the era when human beings began to make tools. Most of the arts and crafts are directly created by the working people and are closely related to people's material and spiritual life. It is often characterized by different styles due to different historical periods, geographical environments, economic conditions, cultural and technical levels, national customs and aesthetic points of view. Marx said, "Craftsmanship reveals the dynamic relationship of man to nature, the direct production process of man's life, and the direct production process of man's social living conditions and the resulting spiritual concepts." From this we can see that since craftsmanship is an important corroboration of the origins of mankind, there is no doubt that the origins of craftsmanship can be traced back to the origins of mankind. The achievements of prehistoric archaeology tell us that a fully developed and sophisticated art existed during the Ice Age. During this time, humans learned to decorate themselves, their tools, their graves, and the houses they lived in with symbols. "Ice Age artists developed a variety of working techniques for almost artistic production, including stone, bone, ivory, and clay roundels, relief carvings, and a variety of incised symbols on these materials." In addition, from the excavated Stone Age artifacts, the tools of primitive people are often decorated with various object shapes or geometric shapes, and because of their exquisite processing, it is difficult for us to distinguish whether they are tools or arts and crafts. Therefore, we believe that arts and crafts originated in the era when mankind began to manufacture tools. "It was in tens of thousands of years of tool-making that mankind acquired a great sensitivity to the sense of form, and the skills accumulated on that basis that made possible the creation of certain arts, especially the plastic arts", and Arts and Crafts underwent an extremely long process before they were gradually formed. Arts and crafts category is more complex, according to its applicability to points, can be divided into daily use and furnishing craft; according to the means of technology to points, can be divided into ceramic technology, metal technology, glass technology, knitting technology, embroidery and weaving technology, carving technology, enamel technology, lacquer technology all kinds of. Moreover, all kinds of crafts can be subdivided, such as according to the different texture of the raw material, the carving process can be divided into tooth carving, jade carving, stone carving, coral carving, wood carving, bamboo carving, camel bone carving, cow bone carving, copper carving, bronze carving, silk carving, brick carving, gold, stone, and other categories of carving the Indian and the New Zealand carving. According to the difference of craftsmanship, the "embroidery" in the embroidery craft, in addition to the four famous embroideries of Beijing embroidery, Suzhou embroidery, Guangdong embroidery and Hunan embroidery, there are also colorful brocade embroidery, peach blossom embroidery, complementary embroidery, braid embroidery and so on. In addition, there are paintings, down paintings, shell paintings, branding paintings, velvet paintings and so on. There are bamboo weaving, straw weaving, palm weaving, straw weaving and so on. Folk crafts include paper-cutting, kites, lanterns, clay figures, face people, sugar people, material products (such as "grape often") and so on.