Folk art encompasses art produced from an indigenous culture or by peasants or other laboring tradespeople. In contrast to fine art, folk art is primarily utilitarian and decorative rather than purely aesthetic.

As a phenomenon that can chronicle a move towards civilization yet rapidly diminish with modernity, industrialization, or outside influence, the nature of folk art is specific to its particular culture. The varied geographical and temporal prevalence and diversity of folk art make it difficult to describe as a whole, though some patterns have been demonstrated.

Antique folk art

Antique folk art is distinguished from traditional art in that while it is collected today based mostly on its artistic merit; it was never intended as a category to be art for art’s sake. Examples include: weathervanes, old store signs and carved figures, itinerant portraits, carousel horses, fire buckets, painted game boards, cast iron doorstops and many other similar lines of highly collectible "whimsical" antiques.

• Artists (28)
• Galleries (11)
• Museums@ (13)

• Outsider Art (21)
• Roadside Attractions (4)
• Shopping@ (18)

See also:

• Arts: Art History: Periods and Movements (331)

• The Folk Art Society of America
  folkart.org
  A non-profit organization which advocates the discovery, study, documentation, preservation and exhibition of folk art, folk artists and folk art environments.
• The Orange Show
  orangeshow.org
  A non-profit organization founded to preserve, present, promote and popularize the artistic expressions of ordinary people.
• Florida Folk
  fiu.edu
  A text-photography documentary about self-taught, outsiders artists living in Florida.