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The Depository documents 18 techniques in Peru; by risk level: 2 endangered, 14 vulnerable, 1 stable. Each record opens with a public summary; the full research record is free to view once registered.
An engraving and pyrographic technique applied to the dried shell of the calabash gourd (Lagenaria siceraria), in which artisans incise fine narrative scenes with a hand tool called a buril, then darken and highlight the carved lines…
The communal harvesting of table salt from a terraced network of thousands of shallow, hand-built evaporation pools cut into a mountainside in Peru's Sacred Valley, fed by a naturally salt-rich spring.
The hand-carving of alabaster (calcium sulfate), known locally as piedra de Huamanga, into devotional religious sculptures, miniature nativity scenes, and decorative reliefs.
The construction and continuous maintenance of the Uros floating islands, an archipelago of roughly 120 artificial reed islands built entirely from totora (Schoenoplectus californicus) on Lake Titicaca near Puno, Peru, at 3,810 meters…
A pre-Hispanic Quechua textile tradition centered on Chinchero, in Cusco's Sacred Valley, in which women hand-spin alpaca, llama, and sheep wool on a drop spindle, dye it using entirely natural insect, plant, and mineral sources, and weave…
An intricate, individually composed geometric design system applied by Shipibo-Konibo women of Peru's central Amazon (along the Ucayali River, centered around Pucallpa) to hand-coiled pottery, hand-woven and hand-painted cotton textiles,…
A dual textile tradition on Taquile Island, Lake Titicaca — women spin wool and weave the wide, patterned chumpi belts on backstrap looms, while men, uniquely, do the fine hand-knitting, producing the iconic chullo hats using wire-thin…
The manual extraction and carving of sillar — a white, porous, easily worked volcanic ignimbrite stone formed by ancient eruptions of the Chachani, Picchu Picchu, and Misti volcanoes over two million years ago — which has built and defined…
A three-dimensional narrative box sculpture from Ayacucho, Peru, descended from colonial-era portable missionary altar boxes and transformed into a distinct popular-art form by Joaquín López Antay (1897–1981), the first Peruvian craftsman…
A hand-thrown and hand-burnished pottery tradition from Chulucanas, Piura region, on Peru's northern coast, reviving the pre-Columbian Vicús culture's (c.
The hand-molding, wood-firing, and mineral-paint decoration of ceramic vessels and, most distinctively, miniature churches placed on rooftops to ward off evil spirits — a tradition centered in Quinua, a town near Ayacucho in Peru's central…
A box drum built entirely from flat wooden panels, invented by enslaved and free Afro-Peruvians along Peru's central coast — particularly around Chincha, south of Lima — after Spanish colonial authorities banned the leather drums enslaved…
The drawing, coiling, twisting, and soldering of fine gold and silver threads into openwork jewelry — earrings, necklaces, rings, and bracelets — in Catacaos, Piura, in Peru's far north.
The harvesting, drying, and hand-bundling of totora reed (Schoenoplectus californicus subsp.
The hand-tooled saddle and full tack set (apero) built specifically for the Caballo Peruano de Paso, Peru's distinctive lateral-gaited horse breed, by dedicated talabarterías (saddlery workshops) that supply riders (chalanes) with…
Peru's national grape spirit, distilled in a single uninterrupted pass from freshly fermented grape must, with no water added, no barrel aging, and no redistillation — a defining set of restrictions that legally distinguishes true pisco…
The making of devil masks and full dance costumes for the diablada, the signature dance of Puno's Festividad de la Virgen de la Candelaria — a February festival syncretizing Catholic devotion with Aymara and Quechua Andean cosmology, in…
A narrative painted-wood-plank tradition from Sarhua, Víctor Fajardo province, Ayacucho, in which relatives and godparents gift a family newly finishing a house with a two-to-three-meter wooden board painted with the household's genealogy,…
All miscellaneous & heritage-adjacent craft techniques worldwide →