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Craft Techniques of El Salvador

The Depository documents 6 techniques in El Salvador; by risk level: 1 endangered, 4 vulnerable, 1 stable. Each record opens with a public summary; the full research record is free to view once registered.

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Weaving & Textiles

  • Panchimalco Pipil Backstrap & Floor-Loom Weaving RevivalWeaving & Textiles · Endangered

    A backstrap- and floor-loom weaving tradition of Panchimalco, a hilltop town settled by Pipil refugees fleeing the 16th-century Spanish invasion of San Salvador, deliberately relaunched in the 1990s through a community "rescate" (rescue)…

  • San Sebastián Telar Weaving & Hammock MakingWeaving & Textiles · Vulnerable

    A fully human-powered weaving tradition of San Sebastián, San Vicente department, in which large wooden telares — European-style treadle looms fitted with flying shuttles, worked by hand and foot together with no industrial machinery…

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Ceramics & Pottery

  • Ilobasco Sorpresas Miniature CeramicsCeramics & Pottery · Vulnerable

    A miniature-ceramic tradition of Ilobasco, a former Lenca and later Pipil settlement in Cabañas department, in which artisans sculpt tiny painted clay scenes of daily Salvadoran life — a woman selling mangoes, a village market, a nativity…

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Painting & Decorative Arts

  • La Palma Arte Naíf (Palmeño) PaintingPainting & Decorative Arts · Stable

    A Salvadoran folk-painting style founded in the small mountain town of La Palma in the early 1970s, when artist Fernando Llort settled there and began teaching local residents to paint small, brightly colored, geometric scenes of rural…

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Basketry & Woven Fiber

  • Nahuizalco Tule & Mimbre (Wicker) WeavingBasketry & Woven Fiber · Vulnerable

    A natural-fiber weaving tradition of Nahuizalco, one of El Salvador's principal Nahuat Pipil communities, using tule — a wetland rush torn into uniform palm-like strips — and mimbre (wicker) to produce petate sleeping mats, baskets, hats,…

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Dyeing & Surface Design

  • Salvadoran Añil (Natural Indigo) DyeingDyeing & Surface Design · Vulnerable

    The fermentation-based extraction and application of natural indigo dye from the xiquilite plant (Indigofera suffruticosa), once El Salvador's dominant export as "Blue Gold" and, per Spanish colonial-era accounts, notably richer and darker…

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