After establishing formal similarities among the needlecases, Boas shows how certain formal features provide a vocabulary out of which individual artisans could create variations in design.

At its best, art furniture was supposed to humanize design because it carried the imprint of the individual artisan's mind and hand.

As it evolved through the centuries and is being produced by individual artisans, products vary in designs and colours.

The family-run economy included the home economies of the peasants, most retail businesses, individual artisans, handicrafts, repair shops, and small trade.

Not only individual artisans are leaving the business.

At the same time industrialisation replaced the individual artisan, or group of artisans, with paid labourers and machine-based production.

Of 100 suppliers, 60 are individual artisans, such as Roger Newman, who makes rocking lambs from his local Welsh timber and fleeces.

Now its 173 artisans include wood cutters, fitters, polishers, sewers and carvers, although a model is considered more beautiful when created by an individual artisan.

Some individual artisans and small shops continue to practice it.

For years the trade has been dominated by what one might call industrial products, glamorous and shiny, sometimes clunky, immensely commercial and generally lacking the imprint of an individual artisan.