Quality reflects skills successfully applied to a problem.

Rotten fish is lower quality than fresh fish unless there is a discovery and preference for a specific way of fermenting or “rotting” the fish such as Lutefisk 

Old growth timber with tight grain could be considered higher quality than faster growth 2x4s with knots.

Generally, quality comes from experience, such as the precise amount of pressure to put on a clay handle on a cup by a ceramicist that worked for 40 years as a potter versus a second semester ceramic student trying to make a cup.

This is not always the case, because sometimes tradition gets in the way of quality and a brand new idea comes for someone with little experience yet is a much more quality idea than existing ones. A great example is Einstein, who while did not create all his theories in a vacuum and built upon the papers in theories of others, created a working model for physics that was completely different than the “quality” Newtonian dynamics. And Newton’s physics is still quality because it still works but it depends on what your aim is as to which is better quality.