This is great; I'm a big fan of Crawford (mainly The World Beyond Your Head) and you've re-piqued my interest in these slightly earlier authors.

It's also worth noting that all of this musing on art isn't surprising in a way; the ancient world all the up to medieval times didn't really such much distinction between the craftsman and the artist, a sharp distinction between "functional" and "aesthetic" is quite a modern sensibility. Everything old is new again!