The formation of craft guild organisations, in Estonian towns called the trades, dates back to the end of 14th century. The first trades to receive the statutes - scraa - in Tallinn were the tailors (1363-75), the goldsmiths (1393) and the butchers (1394).

Already in the 15th-16th centuries, the Germans began restricting the access of craftsmen of other nationalities to the more prestigious guilds - those for goldsmiths, shoemakers, tailors, hatters, etc. Estonians and other non-Germans had to be content with lower status guild professions - masons, stone-dressers, coopers, carpenters, weavers, sail-makers, hemp-twisters, etc. The majority of urban Estonians, however, could not rise any higher than what were known as 'lesser trades' outside the craft guilds.

Guild-based handicraft regulations persisted in Estonian towns, almost unchanged, until the end of the 18th century. It was the new trades regulation imposed by the Russian Imperial Town Law of 1785 that started to curb the monopoly held by the German guild masters in the principal fields of handicraft - henceforth every artisan had the right to practice his trade. Consequently, several craft guilds folded and many artisans accepted jobs at manor houses, thus teaching many an urban master's trick of trade to the rural population.

The final blow for the 'old order' was dealt in 1866 with the abolition of all craft guild privileges, which led to the gradual disintegration of the rest of these organisations.

The last craft guilds, though, continued to exist well into the 20th century, when they were gradually taken over by Estonians or turned into a kind of social welfare organisations for the retired craftsmen.

Since Estonians were still called neophytes in the 18th century, it is no wonder that the 16th-17th century peasant adornments, e.g. the twelve brooches of the Triskelion-master series, found in West Estonia, boast symbols belonging in the pre-conquest period.

Having operated in the mid-16th century, the Triskelion-master is presumed to be Estonian mostly because of the unique, halfpagan décor of his brooches that completely differed from the urban varieties of the time. In the 1540s, goldsmith guilds of Riga and Tallinn complained a number of times about the Uexkülls of Vigala who allowed several itinerant journeymen to undertake 'bootleg' jobs at their manors, so it is not implausible that the Triskelionmaster worked at Vigala.