Artisan is a concept related or related to crafts. Crafts, meanwhile, refers to the work done manually by a person, without the help of mechanical energy. Also the product obtained from this manual labor receives the same name. In turn, the artisan pieces are all different from each other, which clearly differentiates them from those obtained through industrial production or series work.
An artisan, therefore, is someone who does manual labor and is dedicated to selling their products in a private way, without intermediaries. Many times, he even works on demand, making pieces to suit his clients. Generally the ends of that work are artistic: the passion for a task rather than the monetary result of it. Having said this, it is important to clarify that given the etymology of the word, an artisan is an artist with his hands.
A characteristic to highlight is that artisans usually use indigenous materials from the area in which they live, for what their crafts offer beyond their beauty, a message of respect for the territory and the environment. In addition, the manufacture of their pieces is more economical if they work in this way. Thus, those who live in a coastal area use seashells, while in wooded areas wood crafts predominate.
There are different sectors in which artisans excel, the best known are: making decorative objects (from pendants and rings to lamps and large designs), furniture and wooden objects (home furniture and decorative objects made only of wood or combining this material with iron or others), artisan food (it is made without industrial or artificial ingredients), illustrations and books in small print runs (unlike large publishers; these artisans manufacture each book individually, an intense and full of passion).
The fairs of artisans are spaces where workers in the sector come together to market their creations and become known in the environment. These spaces, generally located outdoors and house different stands where artists put their products on display and visitors walk around and can buy. Artisans can also sell their pieces in their own workshops, on the street or in commercial premises (although the latter option is less frequent given the cost of rent or maintenance).
Differences between hippies and artisans
In recent years the term artisan has been mistakenly mixed with the Anglo-Saxon word “hippie”, thus calling those people dedicated to the street sales of their products. It is important to note that a hippie is a person who has been captivated by the homonymous countercultural movement, which emerged in the United States in the 1960s whose main objective was to mobilize the world in search of peace.
This confusion arose because, in the mid-1990s, many young people desirous of greater freedom abandoned their homes and began subsisting by designing small handicrafts and selling them on the street. Since the hippies did something similar (leaving society to retire to live in the country and live a life unrelated to social rules and norms) they were confused with them, and began to call them the same way.
It should be mentioned therefore that, although it is true that many artisans also consider themselves hippies because they admire certain references of those years, the vast majority even ignore where this word comes from and what motivates them to lead to that life are not those objectives. revolutionary but other causes.
