Русский ремесленник

Craft - small manual production, based on the use of hand tools, personal skill workers, making high quality, often highly artistic products.
Craft emerged with the beginning of productive human activity, it took a long historical path of development in different forms: a) home craft - in a subsistence economy, b) trade in order - in terms of decomposition of natural economy, c) a craft market. With the emergence of craft on order, and especially in the market due the emergence and development of cities as centers of commerce and craft. Homemade crafts often referred to as domestic industry (ie production of non-agricultural products), the craft on order and the market - the handicraft industry. In the Russian statistical literature often all artisans XIX-XX centuries. called artisanal.

Craft emerged with the beginning of productive human activity, it took a long historical path of development in different forms: a) home craft - in a subsistence economy, b) trade in order - in terms of decomposition of natural economy, c) a craft market. With the emergence of craft on order, and especially in the market due the emergence and development of cities as centers of commerce and craft. Homemade crafts often referred to as domestic industry (ie production of non-agricultural products), the craft on order and the market - the handicraft industry. In the Russian statistical literature often all artisans XIX-XX centuries. called artisanal.

Domestic trade is widespread throughout the history of pre-capitalist societies. Rural population consumed the greater part of their crafts. Gradually began to play a leading role in order and craft market. In ancient Greece, ancient Rome, in the ancient East there was a considerable number of artisans, the leading independent farm and manufactured products to order or market.
Becoming a professional craft, especially in urban areas has led to the emergence of new spheres of production and new social stratum - the urban artisans. The emergence of advanced forms of organizations (guilds), defending the interests of this layer, created favorable conditions for the development of urban crafts in the Middle Ages. The leading sectors of the urban trades were: suknodelie, production of metal products, glass products, etc. In the process of industrial revolution (mid XVIII century. - First half of the XIX century.) Factory Industry, based on the use of machines, replaced the craft. Craft (on the order and the market) is preserved in the industries related to service individual needs of the consumer or the production of expensive art products - pottery, weaving, carving and art, etc.
To a greater degree of craft remained in underdeveloped countries. However, here is its displacement of the manufacturing industry as a result of industrialization in these countries. There are still folk crafts related to the servicing of tourism and exports.
In Russia, after 1917 the number of craftsmen and artisans has declined sharply, they were united in producers' cooperatives. Survived only a few world-renowned folk crafts: ceramics Gzhel, Dymkovo toy, Palekh miniatures, sheep wool, etc.

History
Already in the ancient world, there are the beginnings of craft activities, manifested in the treatment of certain items, mostly home-based owner of the material and the hands of slaves. On such a nature craft work in Greece we have the testimony of Homer.
With contempt for the Greeks to craft work, which is granted unworthy of a free man, R., as a permanent occupation, was the work of a limited number of persons, except metoykov and slaves were part of the house.
Some trades and in Greece, however, rose to a high level, despite the use of the simplest tools and instruments. Over time, a proliferation of RA not only luxuries, but also to meet the everyday needs of the lower classes of the population.
Already in Greek artisans sometimes experienced competition from the relatively large scale industries arising from the middle of V-th century BC. e. Identical, in general, the character is handicraft production and in Rome. When there is isolated, closed economies, to meet their needs through specialization of slave labor, in Rome there was no ground for the development of RA, as a free professional activity; for lack of a contingent of individuals who would be constantly in need of another's labor and products would be able to pay them , Roman artisans (artifices) should have filled the ranks of the proletarians. Only when the cash-known property, which served as a source of income (usually - a small land-plot), the artisan could comfortably exist in the performance of random orders to have auxiliary income. With the formation of large estates that have absorbed a significant portion of small-holding areas, artisans, whose ranks were filled largely freed, had to seek work on the side and do it at home at the customer.