A concept that is supremely messy: the problem of craftsmanship.

In 2002, historian and thinker Paul Greenhalgh wrote that craftsmanship was “supremely a messy concept.” It was neither simply art, nor design, nor industry, making it difficult to define under a single label. It was all three at once, and at the same time, none of them. We have reached a point where craftsmanship is understood as art, a lifestyle, a tourist souvenir, a communal utopia or, above all, as an activity belonging to a rural world that has disappeared. All of this has created such ambiguity that we barely know what we mean by craftsmanship when we refer to it.

And yet, it is still there, precisely because it resists all categories: it is too complex to fit into just one. However, this ambiguity has also brought about a more tangible problem: no one knows which economy it belongs to.

Craftsmanship is caught between the economics of art and those of design, and is therefore constrained by the limitations of both. The artist sells few pieces at very high prices, while the designer sells many more at lower prices. The craftsperson exists somewhere in between, in a limbo: they produce unique objects, drawing on time, knowledge and territory, but sell them at prices that compete with industrial production.

In order to survive economically, most craft businesses need either to produce a lot and sell cheaply, or to produce little and sell at a high price. In other words, they have to choose, to classify themselves — which is, to some extent, contradictory to their very nature. The problem they face therefore derives directly from the nature of their activity, and cannot be resolved naturally.

This is why this conceptual ambiguity gives rise to an institutional problem. Without a common definition at European level, craftsmanship has no specific statistical codes, does not appear properly in economic registers, cannot access dedicated public funding and lacks legal protection against counterfeiting. A sector worth €50 billion in Europe remains invisible in the data because no one had agreed on what should be counted.

Geographical Indications for Craft and Industrial Products (IGCIs) are the institutional response to this problem. They are not a cultural policy or a symbolic recognition. They are an economic instrument: they turn origin into a right. If your product has a quality or characteristic linked to a specific place, you can register it, protect it and market it with that guarantee throughout the European Union and, through European trade agreements, across the rest of the world.

Brussels lace, Bohemian crystal, Limoges porcelain and Solingen knives ultimately come to be defined not simply as products, but as territories.