What Are The 5 Arts And Crafts?

Crafts include a variety of art forms, from sculpture and metalwork to knitting and printing. These crafts can be divided into five basic types based on their form and purpose: textile, decorative, paper, functional, and fashion crafts.

Textile Crafts

These include any type of craft that uses fabric, yarn, or surface designs. Some examples are knitting, quilting, applique, weaving, and dyeing. Many of these can obviously also be classified as decorative or fashion crafts, as the finished products are often sold as sweaters or wall hangings. However, they are technically textile crafts, as they all start with fabric.

Paper Crafts

As the name suggests, paper crafts are paper-related. Many children are first introduced to paper crafts during preschool, when they use carved potatoes to hand-print patterns on construction paper. Mature versions are woodcuts and linoleum carvings. Other paper crafts include papier-mâché, calligraphy, and papermaking.

Decorative Crafts

Furniture making, metalwork, stenciling, stained glass, gilding, sponge work, and weaving all fall into the decorative crafts category. This category also includes toy making and miscellaneous arts - any art where the end product is a decorative item. Unlike fine art, decorative art often has some practical elements. For example, a piece of furniture may be beautiful in itself - but its primary function is to provide a place to sit.

Combining furniture making with metalwork is a popular trend. Arts and Crafts and home decor magazines often show furniture made of wood but with metal legs or trim. Metalwork tends to be very industrial looking, but also includes a lot of ornate metalwork.

Functional Crafts

Many of the other four types of crafts can also be classified as functional crafts. For example, decorative pottery (including dinner plates and cutlery) is often made from parts that people can eat from. Many furniture crafts are primarily functional, but can also be quite decorative.

Obviously, in order to appeal to the widest possible customer base, it is best to incorporate functionality into your art or craft. Many times, customers will not spend a lot of money on an original piece just because it looks good, because they think the cost is justified because it can also be used in daily life.