What does Handicrafts (Handmade Products) mean?
Handicrafts include a collection of handmade products that are made using natural and indigenous raw materials with the help of hands and tools. These are influenced by the historical background, cultural features, and geographical features of the place of production. Also, social habits, traditional beliefs, indigenous and national aesthetic criteria, as well as the artistic taste and individual creativity of the creator of the work.
According to UNESCO, handicrafts are products that are made entirely by hand and with the help of tools. The most important part of the production of the finished product should be the handiwork of the craftsman.
The use of mechanical tools is allowed. Handicrafts are made from an unlimited number of raw materials. These products may be instrumental, aesthetic, artistic, creative, cultural, decorative, functional, traditional, or religiously and socially symbolic and important.
General characteristics of handicrafts
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) describes the general characteristics of handicrafts as follows:
- Use simple tools to build them
- No need for complex technical knowledge compared to other industries
- Inequality and dissimilarity of manufactured products with each other
- Rooted in the culture, beliefs, and customs of the region
- Ability to supply the bulk of raw materials from domestic sources
- Ability to supply global markets as a cultural and artistic product
- Contribute to the development of the tourism industry and the dissemination of cultural values
- Low investment and high usage
- The high-added value of production
- Ability to apply functional-decorative aspects of the product
- Ease in creating development and relocation of workshop location (production centers)
- Ease of transfer of experiences and production technical knowledge
Perhaps the most comprehensive definition of handicrafts is a combination of the above. In general, it can be said that industrial arts or handicrafts are a branch of traditional arts in any country where one or more or all stages of its construction are done by hand and its raw materials are produced locally.
Due to the lack of use of heavy industrial machinery, each product produced in this area is different and the result of the efforts of one artist is not the same as other products.
Handicrafts originate from the cultural and artistic antiquity of each region and are a symbol of customs, traditions, values, and lifestyles in that region. For the production of handicrafts, there is no need for advanced technology and technical knowledge of foreign experts, and the knowledge of its production is transmitted locally and from generation to generation.
Due to its special characteristics, handicrafts have become an art industry that is associated with low investment and high profitability in domestic and foreign markets.
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Persian Handicrafts
Iran has a long history of producing handicrafts due to its ancient history. On the other hand, having a different climate has made the country’s handicrafts very diverse.
More than 600 types of Handmade Products from different countries are registered with UNESCO. Among these, 450 handicrafts belong to Iran. Of these, 287 types of Iranian handicrafts are produced in Isfahan province. For this reason, in December 2015, the city of Isfahan was selected as a creative international city in the field of handicrafts and traditional arts by UNESCO.
MINAKARI (Vitreous Enameling)
Enamelling is an art with a history of about five thousand years and has been introduced as an Iranian handicraft.
Today, this art is mostly done on copper, but it can also be done on gold and silver. Today in Iran, the center of enamel production is the city of Isfahan and prominent masters are engaged in the production of enamel works. (meenakari)
The closest literal meaning to enamel is the blue sky. Enamel is a work of art in which different designs, usually with a white pen, are engraved on copper, silver, and gold vessels.
The background colour of the motifs is usually blue, green, and sometimes red, which, if we look at the enamel-painted vessels through the eyes of art, is reminiscent of the beautiful blue sky. Maybe that’s why the name of this art has been called Mina Kari. (meenakari)
PERSIAN WOODWORKING (WOODCARVING)
Woodcarving is an art that includes engraving and carving on wood. The word inlay means carving on wood and inlay is a person who carves on wood. Carving is a branch of handicrafts in which patterns are created prominently on the work surface. Woodcarving is one of the sub-branches of this art and it’s most common.
Carving in Iran has a very long history and is a relic of the past. Archaeologists and historians date the use of wood to build houses in Iran to 4,400 BC, dating to the Stone Age and the time when the natives lived in Iran before the Aryan migration. Handmade Products
Since the original designs of the traditional inlay were mostly flowers and plants, Since the original designs of the traditional inlay were mostly flowers and plants, the name inlay, meaning flower and plant, was chosen for this art. woodcarving
NEGARGARI (Miniature)
The delicate art of Negargari, which has long been popular in the Middle East, is called the art of painting. But Iranian Negargari is an art that flowed from the distant past to the Islamic era and was commonly used to illustrate scientific, medical, religious, and especially literary books.
The term Negargari means to paint, to illustrate, to draw, and to paint, and the term Nègargari usually refers to a set of book-related arts such as illustration, gilding, poetry, and so on.
The word miniature is also a term that is mistakenly used instead of Negargari. The word has French roots meaning small and delicate and was mostly used to describe small-sized works, especially in the Middle Ages. But Iranian Nègargari has nothing to do with miniatures except for the small size and some subtleties.
The painter himself was a Sufi and a mystic and was acquainted with Persian poetry and literature and with Iranian wisdom and Islamic mysticism.
Hence, the art of Iranian painting was related to Persian literature. The painter usually took the subjects of his work from Iranian epic, mythological, and mystical stories and showed them in the language of calligraphy and colour. The same beautiful descriptions that poets used in their poems can be found in the work of painters.
The painter himself was a Sufi and a mystic and was acquainted with Persian poetry and literature and with Iranian wisdom and Islamic mysticism.
They likened the night to azure and the day to ruby, the lover’s face to the moon, and his height to the cypress. So the sky was blue-azure. In love stories, the cypress tree stood beside him as a sign of his tall stature and beauty. The face, like the moon’s pill, was depicted as round and white, with small lips like buds and arched eyebrows, the exact equivalent of the same descriptions.
These themes gradually became a fixed principle and contract in Iranian painting and were passed down to the next generations, and the painters considered themselves obliged to observe them. Handmade Products
The artist always looked at the immaterial world and avoided imitating material forms such as three-dimensional spaces, volumetrics, shadows, illumination, and depth.
Iranian painting paid attention to the world of meaning and the world of light. For this reason, paintings are immersed in light, and colours are used in a pure, flat way, away from darkness and light shadows. Bright colours of gold and silver also have a special place in Iranian painting.
According to this thinking, all objects and beings must be drawn completely and face to face. For example, the best angle to draw a human body is from the front because all the organs of the body are fully visible.
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