This is a good question. It’s sounds like a simple one and the answer to it shouldn’t be difficult to find, but this is exactly the sort of question, which turns to be tricky, once you give it a serious thought.

The four words “Is Craft intellectually satisfying?” touch actually two different subjects: the subject of a craft and the subject of an intellectual satisfaction. In order to give an answer to the “big” question: how one subject is related to the other, it is necessarily at first to answer many “small” questions.

What is an “intellectual satisfaction”? How to assess it?

I guess it varies from person to person. Everybody looks for different ways to satisfy his or her intellect. Some people need to conquer Nietzsche and read front stories of “Washington Post” before breakfast, while the others are completely content with the latest paperback thriller and sports evening on TV. Comparison between both intellectual levels is not relevant for the “big” question.

What is “Craft”? How to define it in our very diversified world?

At first, born from a need of humans to ease the circumstances of their daily life it went along with a progress of development of a mankind: from clumsy chopped wood sticks to intricate rococo carvings; from rough scraped animal skins to the elaborate pieces of fashion; from clay pots of simple form to fine china; from strings of bear claws to exquisite jewelry. Products of craft and processes of making them were in the center of all economical stages: from objects being made for personal needs to items of natural trade, from manufacture production to industrialism.

Not to make things complicated I won’t consider industrial and manufacture mass production qualified for the question of an intellectual satisfaction, were is still enough handmade craft in the world to talk about.

 
There are in a rough outline two groups of handmade products and two groups of people making them.

At first there are the people who reproduce traditional styles, patterns, who repeat the ideas of others and themselves from piece to piece. Does it matter that somebody find it boring? This is not how I interpret the “big” question. The question is: do they find it satisfying for their own intellect? I guess so. They are holding on to their traditions, keeping them alive, maybe learning more and having fun in process. They do it for themselves, they do it for their friends and families, sometimes for sale and may be, considering craft, this is all the intellectual satisfaction they need.

Then there are people who are trying to make their craft special. They do “one of a kind” fine craft pieces. They spend a lot of time with thinking, researching, studying, sketching, trying, experimenting, designing, changing and creating. Are those processes intellectually satisfying? I would say: definitely yes.

What about people who are not involved in craft? Who are just the observers? Just think. In most cases the simple craft pieces, regardless of their quality, represent our first encounter with the foreign and often exotic culture. To see a poorly made bowl in a Chinese restaurant is surely not as much intellectually satisfying as to be able to speak Chinese language, but the red dragon on the bowl tickles your intellect and makes you say: “One day I want go to China”. An oriental carpet is all what the most people get to see of Orient and it could be just a floor covering, or a food for an intellect, if you choose to see it as such and a Russian wooden doll could be a beginning of a life long interest for this country.

Think, that the often broken and damaged craft objects are the only heritage we have got from the long ago disappeared civilizations and how much information they share with us about circumstances and ways of lives of our ancestors. Is subject of antic and historical craft pieces satisfying for intellect? I would say: always.

So, consider many different aspects of craft and many different levels of intellectual satisfaction, under the bottom line, my answer to the question “Is Craft intellectually satisfying?” is: yes, it is, as long as you have an intellect to begin with.