The same as now except each town or city would have a Guild to which you would have to belong in order to trade. These Guilds regulated quality and price. They also oversaw the apprenticeship schemes. If you wanted to be a Master, rather than a Journeyman (someone who had served an apprenticeship and was thus a tradesman who was no longer bound to a Master), you would have to produce a masterpiece to a standard that the Guild had set. Once a Master, you could take on apprentices of your own. At that point you would have become as much a businessman as an artisan.
Being an artisan could be very profitable as long as what you were producing was in demand.
