This pot with which I share my desk, this pot made by George Dymesich, begs the same question. It is the communication of touch between human beings. I think that this tea pot knows the answer to that question. Craft has been with human kind longer perhaps than art, or perhaps it has not. In the most primitive hunting and gathering cultures, ritual was a part of every day life.
Art is an activity of ritual.
It is an act of symbolism. It is both precursor to, and an expression of religion. The practice of craft is universal, and predates the aggregation of any human or protohuman group to which we would attribute the development of symbolic communication. Craft is neither symbolic nor religious. The process of creating craft may be termed by some to be ritualistic due to the means of selection of the materials to be crafted, the inherent limitations of the human hand, and the need to merge the actions of one with the reactions of the other.