Back in the 1970s when my wife and I started making southwestern jewelery, there were certain descriptions and caveats, according to the Hopi Tribal definition, hand made meant that there could be no machines used all work had to be done with hand tools, Rolling mills were not allowed, buying pre rolled sheet, wire,or bezel was a no no, sheet had to be hand hammered, filed and sanded, wire had to be pulled through draw plates, and casting was a sin. The other tribal conventions were allowed more latitude, especially with regard to raw materials, by the early 80s all this had been tossed out the window. I had the privilege of knowing two of the best Hopi silversmiths of that era, Preston Monongay and Charles Laloma. I was fortunate to be allowed to watch them work and learned a lot from these gentlemen, they did not use an electric buffer, they used deer hide and ash to polish their overlay pieces, all their stamps were made from valve stems and old files, which were annealed hammered to shape then incised with files. so in this vein what we do would only be considered hand crafted, since much of the work involved is done with our hands. This became such a bone of contention that New Mexico passed several laws outlining the criteria of hand Made, Hand crafted, Sand cast or Machine cast.
I've seen state employees come through the old Santa Fe flea market and issue citations for violating these laws, same in Taos. So on my business cards and website I try and stress that my pen are hand crafted, I've used my CNC mill to design a couple of pocket clips, but the ones we get in the kits are all die struck with few exceptions. I suppose if a person wanted to get anal they could point out that our pens that use kits are basically Hand assembled, (doesn't have a very classy sound to it though)
The Hellenes and Romans used to debate unanswerable questions like physics before people like Deomcritus and the like came along with an answer..
