Art, craft, trade, blag?...

So often one reads in comments about an averagely nice job done that it's a "work of art", etc, when actually it's probably just a nice job, done by a half competent craftsperson.  There is little or no "art" in it. It's just a well planned and excecuted job of craftsmanship and none the worse for that.  Frankly I get very annoyed with the way the word art is thrown around as some kind of superlative.  Look, if you will, at most art these days.  It's execrable garbage for the most part, so I really don't want someone who hasn't thought it through calling what I've happily practiced my craft on, "art".  It is NOT art, it is craftsmanship.  Cut the legacy class crap and deal with the fact that craft is good.  Not bloody "crafting", for God's sake, that dead end glorified recycling of household goods, but real, hand made, mind conceived, eye checked (constantly), craftsmanship, borne of years of instruction and practice.
I regard a few particular crafts as Godlike.  Horology, Coachbuilding, Graining and Marbling (where a little artfulness might reside), Fine Cabinet Making, Silversmithing.  Can't think of that many others.

Trades?  Well there is some crossover there, hence the term Craftsman Plumber for instance, meaning doing that noble trade like it used to be done with wiped joints and hand formed zinc flats, church roofs and rainwater furniture, not sticking PVC pipes together with a pot of glue.  No shame in trade either.  Regardless of what the Victorian snobs reckoned.

All the rest is bodgery, blagging and conmen. Cowboys as we now call them.

I would like to be thought of as a Master Craftsman, but I have not studied one narrow craft long enough or sufficiently thoroughly to be called that.  I was today described as a "Real Craftsman", and that, I regard as a true compliment.