The Shadow of the Maker

[Pitchwife]

It has been noted and discussed repeatedly on these Downs (e.g. on two old threads here and there, and lately in the thread about greed in Tolkien) that Aulë, the Smith of the Gods, was a bit of a black sheep among the Valar. Not only did he, too impatient to abide with The Way God Planned It, try to anticipate the Children of Ilúvatar by creating the Dwarves and was promptly chidden for it by Eru himself, he also had some sore bad luck in how his assistants and pupils turned out:

-Sauron, aka Annatar, defected to become Morgoth's lieutenant and later used his smithcraft to forge One Ring to Rule Them All;
-Fëanaro Cúrufinwë, greatest jewel-smith ever, got carried away by his obsession with his works into rebelling against the Valar and convinced most of the Noldor (who were most into arts and crafts of all the Elven peoples) to follow him;
-Fëanor's descendant Celebrimbor, greatest Elven artisan in Middle-earth, lent his ear to Annatar aka Sauron (see above), whom the other great Elven lords had wisely rejected, and learned how to forge the Rings that would make the Free People susceptible to Sauron's domination;
-Curumo aka Saruman, another of Aulë's Maiar, fancied himself a Ringmaker and went from bulldozing trees in Fangorn to causing an industrial revolution in the Shire.

It's hard not to see a recurring theme here, and it's not so much about Aulë himself than about the archetype he embodies: the Artisan, the Inventor, the Maker. This post over on the greed thread sums up what I'm driving at here in a few words:

Originally Posted by Zigûr

While I don't believe Aulë himself is a proud or greedy character, I do believe that Professor Tolkien consistently argued that his discipline, "making", was a very dangerous one. I believe he saw a potential connection between a desire to "make" and a desire to control. Thus "makers" are often the ones who desire power and domination. "Makers" (in Arda) wish to bring their will into being, and their will might easily transform from "the existence of a thing" to "a state of affairs".

I think this could do with a little elaboration and discussion. Why do you think Tolkien felt such a need to repeatedly insist on the liability of Makers to lapse into evil, or at least collaboration with evil? Does this apply to all kinds of art and invention, or are some more endangered than others? Is there, in this respect, a categorical difference between 'pure' art (Fëanor, Celebrimbor) and 'evil' industrial technology (Sauron, Saruman), or are we looking at a sliding scale? How did the Professor view his own (sub)creativity in this context, and whence his need to defend it as a genuinely Christian enterprise and insist that "we make still by the law in which we're made" (Mythopoeia)?