English

Noun

artisanality ‎(uncountable)

1. The state or quality of being an artisan.
   • 1995, Richard A. Posner, Overcoming Law, page 46,

     The spirit of artisanality is captured in the nineteenth-century “arts and crafts” movement, which “emphasized the human touch — the care, craftsmanship and attention to detail that go into a piece of furniture or a decorative object that is crafted by hand. The art of creating something, it was thought, should be a joyful, exhilarating experience, not just a way of earning money.”¹⁸

   • 2010, Matthew Fort, Eating Up Italy: Voyages on a Vespa, page 45,

     He gave off an aura not of romance or woolly artisanality but rather of canny commercial nous.

   • 2011, Vera Keller, How to Become a Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosopher: The Case of Cornelis Drebbel (1572-1633), Sven Dupré, Christoph Lüthy (editors), Silent Messengers: The Circulation of Material Objects of Knowledge in the Early Modern Low Countries, page 125,

     The printed editions of Drebbel′s works thus allow us to trace circulation between a culture of artisanality sure enough of its own authority to stake claims to knowledge in print, and an academic culture appreciative enough of artisanality to support those claims through both erudition and elegance.

2. The state or quality of being artisanal (made by artisans or involving the work of artisans, with comparatively little reliance on machinery).
   • 2004, Anya Fernald, A World Of Presidia: Food, Culture & Community, page 13,

     Aspects such as links to the territory, artisanality and the size and sustainability of producer organizations are evaluated, and if the product meets the necessary requirements, it is then ready to join the Ark of Taste […] .

   • 2008, Murray Pomerance, The Horse Who Drank the Sky: Film Experience Beyond Narrative and Theory, page 29,

     With early films, the viewer could not but be conscious of the artisanality of the work; with narrative film, as Belton (1985) and others have shown, the cinematic project was to disguise the artisanality of the work as much as possible so as to seduce the viewer′s complivity and engagement; further, the increasingly elaborate mechanism of studio production from 1930 onward meant that artisanality was also being hidden by—indeed, transformed into—the systematic mechanical operation of well-organized and interlocking parts.

   • 2008, Christina Stringer, Agri-Food Commodity Chains and Globalising Networks, page 115,

     The identity dovetails with images of environmental purity, artisanality, adaptability, competitiveness, creativity, and sophistication.

Related terms

• artisan
• artisanal

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