Representing craft as cultural commodity in its cultural economy

Defining craft has proven troublesome in craft-related research, with existing definitions either failing to reflect the expanse and variety of crafts or creating artificial boundaries, which constrain the fullest extent of how crafts can be recognized, viewed, interpreted, preserved and promoted. This research presents an examination of a place-based lacquerware craft of rural Japan, which offers an alternative approach to representing craft based on the idea of conceptual and operational space for both craft categories and craft items. Such a combined way of viewing craft – conceptually and operationally – offers the fullest interpretation of what craft is both in its original and ideal sense and in terms of its contemporary, social and economic realities. Further, the article proposes that by extending such conceptual and operational views of a particular craft category or item by linking them with the circumstance of their respective host locale, the resulting representation yields the craft as a cultural commodity, through which it ultimately constitutes its own independent cultural economy. The conclusion of the research proposes how such an approach extends the practice of static definitions by connecting craft through its conceptual and operational realities to the contemporary reality of both cultural and economic commodities.