Crafts as handmade objects is nothing out of the ordinary even outside American/Canadian english. The Oxford dictionary has a definition very close to the Meriam one presented earlier.Oxford Languages | The Home of Language Data
noun
1an activity involving skill in making things by hand: -the craft of cobbling
[mass noun]: art and craft - (crafts) work or objects made by hand: the shop sells local crafts
People, including yourself, seemed to be questioning whether the word “crafts” was ever properly used to describe small handmade decorative objects in any variety of English. My post was to indicate that it was a common usage at least in US English. With regard to your post, whatever the origin of the phrase, at present “crafts” is a common word in the variety of English with the largest number of speakers.
A Google search reveals many instances of the use of the word “craft” or “crafts” with reference to such objects in Jamaica, many of them from local Jamaican sources. Just a few examples:
The New York Times describes the Jamaican crafts available atDevon House.
I think that we can confidently say that the word “craft” for small decorative handmade objects is both known and widely used in Jamaica, even if one person on a message board somewhere seems to be puzzled by it.
ETA: While this usage may be rarer in British English (although evidently not unknown) than it is in the US, most buyers of such artifacts in Jamaica are probably American tourists from the US, so one would this meaning to be well known there.
No, you misunderstand me. I accept that this sense of “craft” is common in US English, and I can see no reason to suggest that, in US English, it’s not “proper”. I hadn’t come across it until I read this thread, but why would I? That’s certainly not evidence that the sense does not exist or that it is “improper”.
“Craft market”, “craft fair”, “craft shop”, etc are common in Hiberno-English, Australian English, British English and no doubt many other varieties of English, but it doesn’t follow that an item bought there is referred to as a “craft”, and my impression is that, outside the US, it generally isn’t. The NYT article you cite is hardly evidence for anything other than US English. And the Treasure Hunt Craft Shop various describes its merchandise as “crafts” and “craft items”; only the latter, I think, is standard in British English.
“Craft” is a curious word, in some ways. You can have an aircraft, but if you have more than one you don’t have aircrafts; you just have aircraft, or (say) three aircraft. Siimlarly craft in the sense of boat is never pluralised; it either means one boat, or it’s a mass noun for boats. But craft in the sense of skill is pluralised; printmaking, weaving and cabinetmaking are not three craft, but three crafts.
As already noted, “craft” did have the sense of “a product of art” in British English until the sixteenth century. It’s possible that it survived in that sense in US English since then, but my hunch is that it probably didn’t, and the modern sense that the OP refers to started out as a back-formation from terms like “craft shop”.
I would object to the notion that a “craft” object is primarily decorative: That, to me, is the distinction between “arts” and “crafts”. An art object is primarily decorative, but a craft object is primarily functional. The craft hats that my mom crochets are primarily for keeping your head warm, the craft rugs she weaves are primarily for putting another layer between your feet and the floor, and the craft purses she sews are primarily for carrying small useful items. They’re all decorative, too, but not as their primary purpose.
There’s no reason to believe that Jamaican usage is going to reflect standard usage in the UK, even if it was once a British colony. As I pointed out, tourism in Jamaica is overwhelmingly from the US - a check suggests that US tourism is three to five times higher than that from Canada, the UK, and the rest of Europe combined. Therefore it is very likely the US meaning is going to be common or at least widely understood in Jamaica in an industry that is closely dependent on the tourist trade.
Those aren’t great examples (and the last one is from the US, not Jamaica). In Ireland we don’t refer to handcrafted objects as “crafts” but we could certainly have a “craft market” or “craft fair”.
In the same way we happily talk about an “arts fair” but we don’t refer to a single work of art as “an art”.
You missed UDS’s point. You provided what you thought was an example of the word “craft” being used in Jamaica to mean a handcrafted object. However, if you click on the link, this is what you find:
(my emphasis)
This is consistent with how the word would be used in British English (“craft” meaning skill or technique; “craft item” meaning something crafted).
My emphasis. The photos indicate small handmade objects.
The second example, which you yourself quoted and I quoted again above, refutes your point.
Seriously, this is getting a little ridiculous when even a link to a store in Jamaica using the word in the exact sense of small handmade objects is not accepted as sufficient evidence.
Exactly. What a baker makes and sells makes is collectively referred to as bakery, but an individual baked item is not “a bakery”. Nor would you say that a baker sells “bakeries”.
What a craft worker makes and sells is collectively called craft, but (in my variety of English) an individual crafted item is not “a craft”, and a craft worker does not sells “crafts”. He sells craft, craftwork or craft items.
I think it has been established that in US English, and at least sometimes in Jamaican English, a craft worker (or a craft shop) can be said to sell “crafts”. My question is, in those or any other varieties of English, would an individual item sold by a craft worker ever be called “a craft”? I don’t think anybody has produced an instance of this yet, and I’m wondering if that would be a familiar usage to anyone.
What may be going on here is that a craft shop sells “crafts”, not because each item it sells is a craft, but because their stock typically includes the produce of of more than one craft - they sell needlework, they sell weaving, they sell pottery, etc. Each of these is a craft, and so what they sell is “crafts”. But if that’s the explanation of the usage, then I would expect to find that an individual item sold is not “a craft” any more that it is “a pottery” or “a needlework”.
