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[shadowform]

Dwarven industry in general is rather abstract.

A Dwarven craftsman can, over the course of a year, easily produce 200 crafts.  How many great painters do you know that could produce 200 paintings of good quality in a single year?  Let alone having a significant number of those be deemed masterpieces?  I'd dare say, that someone who produces art that prolifically and of that high quality...  would be legendarily good.

The same goes for masons and metal crafters.  It took Michelangelo three years to craft his statue of David from marble.  A legendary dwarven mason could craft dozens of masterwork marble statues in a single year.  I am, of course, disregarding the fact that David was 17 feet tall, but there's not really a scale in Dwarf Fortress.

And you'd yell at him for wasting flux anyway, but that's besides the point.

[Draco18s]

It took Michelangelo three years to craft his statue of David from marble.

To be fair, he did very little of the actual work himself.

In the same time period he also worked on:

Madonna and Child (Church of Our Lady, Bruges), St. Paul (Cathedral, Siena), St. Peter (same location), Pius (same), Madonna and Child with the Infant St. John (Royal Academy of Arts, London), Madonna and Child (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence), and the Tomb of Pope Julius II.

[Atanamis]

Nobody objects against fey moods making dwarves legendary, but against ordinary farmers becoming legendary just by doing their job.

(Although I expect DF to become more and more satisfying even with no or less moods, but that's something else.)

Exactly. I'd expect that long term you get artifacts far less commonly, and the ones you do get will be much more significant. They'll have powers and become the centerpiece of world affecting legends. You might get 5 artifacts in a fortress large and wealthy enough to attract the monarch of your civilization. I'd expect to see about half of all legendary dwarves be from moods, with maybe 10-15 out of 300 dwarfs reaching legendary status.

These legendary dwarves would become the centerpiece of your fortress, dictating the most profitable industries for you to focus on and what you become known for in the greater world. You wouldn't just get requests from liaisons for leather shirts, but for masterwork leather goods made by the legendary leatherworker Urist, known around the world for his artifact leather sock. His fame would attract other master leather workers who would come to watch as he creates masterpieces.

Having a legendary dwarf should MEAN something. As others have pointed out, this is a person who lives rent free in even royal quarters, and who if military is never asked to do anything else ever again. These people should be the heroes of the fortress, known about far and wide, and treated with respect even by royalty.