The Depository · Browse · Painting & Decorative Arts
83 techniques from 54 countries; by risk level: 18 critically endangered, 28 endangered, 23 vulnerable, 11 stable, 1 thriving. Each record opens with a public summary; the full research record is free to view once registered.
The tracing of one-stroke geometric figures on smoothed sand or ash by the Lunda Cokwe (Chokwe) and neighboring peoples of eastern Angola, using a matrix of dots pressed into the surface as fixed anchor points around which the drawing's…
A traditional ornamental painting technique combining vivid color with specific lettering styles and floral, symbolic, and figurative motifs, born in Buenos Aires's late-19th-century carriage-body workshops (carrocerías), where three…
Bark painting is the primary visual art form of Arnhem Land Aboriginal communities — paintings in natural ochre pigments on sheets of stringybark (Eucalyptus tetrodonta) that are stripped, flattened, heated, and prepared as a smooth…
Ochre — iron oxide mineral pigments ranging from yellow to red to purple — is the primary painting material of Aboriginal Australian visual culture, used in bark painting, body painting, rock art, and ceremony for at least 65,000 years.
Warlukurlangu Artists is a community-owned Aboriginal art center in Yuendumu (Northern Territory) that supports the contemporary acrylic painting tradition of the Warlpiri people — one of the defining art movements of the 20th century.
The Viennese gilded frame making tradition — the production of the ornate gilded wooden frames for the Habsburg Imperial paintings and mirror collections, using the traditional water gilding technique that produces the highest-quality…
A self-taught outsider-art painting tradition founded by Amos Ferguson (1920–2009), a Nassau house painter who took up fine art in his 40s after his nephew George described a dream in which Jesus told him Ferguson was 'wasting his talent.'…
A performative narrative art form combining hand-painted cloth scrolls with sung storytelling, practiced continuously in the Bengal cultural region — including present-day Bangladesh — since at least the 12th century according to…
The hand-painting and decoration of Dhaka's iconic three-wheeled cycle rickshaws — a form of moving public folk art recognized by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December 2023 as…
Lhazo (ལྷ་བཟོ — 'deity craft') is the Bhutanese tradition of Buddhist thangka scroll painting — closely related to Tibetan thangka but with a distinct Bhutanese iconographic style: the Karma Gadri tradition.
Beijing kite making (specifically the Sha Yan — swallow kite — tradition) is a 600-year-old structural craft combining split-bamboo frame engineering, silk or paper skin application, and miniature Chinese painting into an aerodynamically…
The hand-construction and hand-painting of the carreta, Costa Rica's national symbol since 1988 and a UNESCO-recognized Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage since 2005, whose brightly colored, intricately patterned decoration began…
The Czech kraslice (decorated Easter egg) tradition — the making of the distinctive Czech decorated Easter eggs using multiple techniques including wax resist (batika), scratching (rytí), wire wrapping, and natural dyeing.
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…
The making of luxury fans — the assembly of the monture (fan sticks, in ivory, mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell, or wood) with the feuille (fan leaf, in paper; silk; or lace) in the Paris tradition.
The application of gold leaf (23.75-carat gold beaten to 0.1 micron thickness) to furniture, picture frames, and architectural elements in the Paris tradition.
The ancestral tattooing tradition of the Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia) in which the entire body -- including the face -- is progressively covered over years or decades with dense geometric patterns (kake · ipu · etua) encoded with…
The technique of the Wessobrunner School — the 17th–18th century Bavarian stucco and fresco tradition centered on the Abbey of Wessobrunn that produced the most celebrated church ceiling decorations of the German Baroque and Rococo periods…
The Byzantine icon painting tradition — the production of Greek Orthodox icons following the specific Byzantine iconographic canon using egg tempera on gold-leafed gessoed wood panel.
The Skyros painted furniture tradition — the distinctive Greek island folk decorative painting of the Sporades island of Skyros, whose characteristic style of covering every surface of the traditional Skyrian house interior (furniture,…
A self-taught, untrained painting tradition rendering Kaqchikel Maya daily life, religious festivals, and community history in small, detailed, brightly colored canvases, founded by Andrés Curruchich (1891–1969) in the town of San Juan…
A largely self-taught, untrained painting tradition rendering Haitian rural life, history, and — most distinctively — Vodou spiritual imagery in bold, flat color and intuitive composition, catalyzed institutionally by Le Centre d'Art, an…
A self-taught primitivist painting tradition rendering Honduran street scenes, market life, and small-town landscapes in bold, direct color, founded by José Antonio Velásquez (1906–1983), widely regarded as the founder of Honduran…
Aipan is a ritual floor and wall painting tradition of the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, executed by women using red clay (geru) ground and white rice paste (bisvar) applied by finger to create geometric and figurative designs at…
Gond painting is a living visual tradition of the Gond tribal people — one of India's largest Adivasi (indigenous) communities, centered in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Maharashtra.
Kangra miniature painting is the most refined school of Pahari (hill) miniature painting, developed under the patronage of the Kangra Rajas in the 18th century — particularly under Sansar Chand (r.
Kerala mural painting is a classical tradition of large-scale narrative painting on the interior walls of Kerala temples and palaces, executed in the fresco-secco technique on lime-plastered surfaces using natural mineral pigments.
Madhubani (literally 'forest of honey') painting is a pictorial tradition from the Mithila region of northern Bihar practiced by women of the Brahmin, Kayastha, and Dusadh communities.
Pattachitra (from Sanskrit: patta = cloth/leaf; chitra = picture) is a classical painting tradition of Odisha practiced primarily in Raghurajpur village (Puri district) by the Chitrakara community.
Paitkar (also Jadu Patua) is the oldest known scroll painting tradition in India, practiced by the Chitrakar (painter) caste among the Santali and Ho tribal communities of Jharkhand and West Bengal border districts.
Patua is a community of itinerant scroll painters and singer-storytellers from West Bengal (principally Medinipur, Birbhum, Murshidabad districts) who create narrative painted scrolls (pata) that are unfurled sequentially as the artist…
Rogan is a textile and surface painting technique practiced exclusively in Nirona village, Kutch, Gujarat, by the Khatri family — now reduced to a single family of two brothers, Abdul Gafur Khatri and his brother.
Ittalan is the sacred mural painting tradition of the Saura (Sora) tribal community of Rayagada, Gajapati, and Koraput districts in southern Odisha.
Thangka painting is a sacred Tibetan Buddhist scroll painting tradition practiced in Sikkim, Ladakh, and the Tibetan Buddhist communities of Arunachal Pradesh and Darjeeling.
Sohrai and Kohbar are two distinct but related ritual wall-painting traditions of the Jharkhand tribal communities (Kurmi, Munda, Oraon) of Hazaribagh district, both executed by women on mud-plastered house walls using fingers and natural…
Tanjore painting is a classical South Indian panel painting tradition from Thanjavur (Tanjore), Tamil Nadu, distinguished by its rich surface ornamentation: gold foil applied over raised gesso relief forms the jewelry, crowns, and…
Warli painting is the ritual mural tradition of the Warli tribe of the Palghar and Nashik districts of Maharashtra, painted on the interior walls of homes for wedding and harvest ceremonies using white rice paste on a red-brown mud plaster…
Perada painting (also known as Kamasan style, from the village of Kamasan in Klungkung district) is the classical narrative painting tradition of Bali, producing two-dimensional works on cloth or bark paper depicting scenes from the…
Sentani bark cloth painting is the decorative and ritual art tradition of the Sentani people of Lake Sentani, near Jayapura in Papua.
The creation of small-scale, richly detailed Persian paintings, an art form first established in ancient Persia before spreading to China, Turkey, and other Middle Eastern countries, and directly modernized in the twentieth century most…
The tradition of decorative painting on furniture, farm buildings, and household objects in the South Tyrolean Alpine style — including Bauernmalerei (peasant painting) on furniture with floral and figurative motifs, and the related…
The creation of decorative surfaces imitating pietra dura or marble inlay using colored gypsum paste (selenite/scagliola) applied to a plaster ground — a technique that can reproduce the appearance of pietra dura at a fraction of the cost…
The creation of decorative surface panels and objects using split and flattened rye straw as a veneer material, arranged in geometric or pictorial patterns and adhered to a ground — a tradition associated with Pavia province and the Po…
A tradition of decorative wall painting in Rome — including trompe-l'oeil architectural illusion, faux marble (finto marmo), marmorino plaster, and the maintenance of genuine fresco technique for church and palace restoration — sustained…
The painting and carving of the carretto siciliano — the decorated Sicilian cart — covering every surface with narrative scenes from the Carolingian cycle, Norman history, and religious subjects in vivid primary colors (red, yellow, blue,…
Kinpaku-oshi (金箔押し — gold leaf pressing) is the technique of applying gold leaf to wooden Buddhist sculptures, screens, and architectural elements using urushi adhesive (漆箔 urushi-haku) or sizing (膠箔 nikawa-haku) as the bonding medium.
The creation of mosaics by pressing ceramic, stone, or glass fragments into wet plaster, historically used to decorate the floors, walls, and ceilings of buildings across Jordan primarily between the first and eighth centuries AD,…
Lao Buddhist temple mural painting (ຮູບສິນວັດ) is the tradition of painting the interior and exterior walls of Buddhist temples (wat) with scenes from the Jataka tales (the Buddha's previous lives), the Pha Lak Pha Lam (Lao Ramayana), and…
Penang's traditional sign painting is the freehand lettering tradition that produced the hand-painted shop signs of George Town's historic streets — letters painted in Chinese, Tamil, Jawi, and Roman scripts with custom styles,…
The pressing of brightly colored wool yarn into a beeswax-covered wooden board to build intricate, symbolic images derived from shamanic visions and Wixárika cosmology, developed from the 1950s–1960s as a flat-panel adaptation of the…
The painting of Buddhist devotional scroll images (thangka) in a distinctly Mongolian visual style that developed rapidly from the 18th century onward and achieved a recognizably independent regional idiom by the early 20th century,…
The multi-stage hand production of glazed terracotta mosaic tilework, originating in 10th-century Fez and considered the defining decorative element of Moroccan royal and religious architecture.
The Chin facial tattoo tradition (မျက်နှာတက် myin dat) is the practice of tattooing the faces of Chin women with sub-group-specific patterns — historically a coming-of-age practice for Chin women beginning around age 11–15, producing…
Mithila painting is the women's ritual painting tradition of the Mithila cultural region straddling the Nepal-India border (Janakpur, Nepal and Madhubani, Bihar, India).
The Patan school of thangka painting is Nepal's distinct contribution to the broader Tibeto-Buddhist thangka tradition — distinct from both Tibetan thangka (Menri or Karma Gadri styles) and Bhutanese Lhazo (CRAFT-0533) in its…
Paubha is the Newar Buddhist scroll painting tradition in the Chitrakar caste's distinct iconographic vocabulary.
A self-taught, brightly colored folk-painting style founded in 1965–66 by the Catholic priest, poet, and liberation theologian Ernesto Cardenal, who settled on the Solentiname archipelago in southern Lake Nicaragua and, together with…
The Ohrid icon painting school of North Macedonia — the production of the distinctive Ohrid Byzantine icons in the tradition of the 9th-century St.
The Norwegian rosemaling tradition — the distinctive Norwegian folk painting style of flowing acanthus and flower motifs that decorated the furniture and household objects of rural Norway from the 18th century.
Pakistan truck art is the tradition of elaborately decorating commercial trucks, buses, and rickshaws with paintings, carved wood panels, metal chains, and reflective tape — creating the most densely decorated commercial vehicles in the…
The hand-tapped tattooing tradition of the Butbut people of Kalinga province, northern Luzon, applied by a mambabatok (traditional tattooist) using a thorn from a pomelo or calamansi tree affixed to a bamboo stick, struck rhythmically with…
The Kraków szopka tradition — the making of the elaborately decorated Christmas nativity scenes (szopki) whose form is not a simple stable but a multi-towered architectural fantasy based on the spires and towers of Kraków's historic…
The application of henna, a natural reddish-brown dye derived from powdered leaves, used by Qatari women for cosmetic body decoration for hundreds of years and directly described by The Peninsula Qatar as an art form 'steeped in ancient…
The distinctive gouache and pastel painting technique developed and taught at the Poto-Poto School of Painting, founded in 1951 in the Moungali neighborhood of Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, by young French amateur painter Pierre Lods…
The Romanian painted glass icon tradition — the production of religious icons painted in reverse on the back surface of glass panels whose characteristic folk painting style (bright colors, simplified forms, characteristic facial…
The sculpting and painting of raised geometric relief patterns from cow dung and natural pigment by Rwandan artisans, predominantly women, of the eastern Kirehe District (Nyakarambi/Nyakarimbi villages).
Kolam is the traditional South Indian Tamil practice of drawing geometric and floral patterns on floors and thresholds using rice flour — practiced daily in Hindu Tamil households as a spiritual protective act and on festival occasions as…
The making of painted paper and silk fans in Valencia — Spain's primary fan production center, responsible for the majority of Spanish fan export since the 18th century.
The Dalmålning tradition — the distinctive Dalarna wall and ceiling painting tradition whose Kurbits (a stylized gourd plant) floral motif combined with biblical narrative scenes was the primary decorative art of Dalarna farmhouses from…
The sgraffito house decoration tradition of the Engadin valley — the technique of applying two or more layers of differently colored lime plaster and incising a design through the upper layer to reveal the lower, producing the…
The conservation of the Carolingian frescos at the Convent of St.
The conservation of the painted churches (oratori) of Canton Ticino — a remarkable concentration of medieval and Renaissance fresco programs in the small rural chapels of the Ticino valleys, painted by the same Lombard and Ticinese master…
The deliberate revival of natural stone mosaic craftsmanship in Aleppo, led by visual artist Asma Mahbouk, founder of the Armagan natural stone mosaic team, specifically launched in 2018 with the aim of reviving an art form she directly…
Caicui (彩繪 — 'color painting') is Taiwan's tradition of decorative painting applied to temple and traditional architecture — covering beams, eaves, doorways, and walls with narrative scenes, auspicious symbols, and deity images.
The application of vivid, glossy bicycle and enamel paint onto board or canvas in bold, naive, narrative style, founded by Edward Saidi Tingatinga (who both worked and died at Muhimbili Hospital, Dar es Salaam) and originating as a…
The Kolae is the traditional long-hulled fishing boat of the Thai-Malay Deep South — the provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat, Satun, and Yala — painted in an extraordinarily vivid tradition of freehand geometric and floral decoration that…
Thai gold leaf application — known as pit thong (applying gold) or in its craft context pang thong — is the traditional technique of applying pure gold leaf to Buddha images, temple architecture, ceremonial objects, and devotional items.
The Menri (མེན་རི) school is the canonical Lhasa court thangka painting tradition — the most systematized of Tibet's painting lineages, codified by Menthangpa Menla Dhondup in the 15th century and maintained as the official style of the…
The Ukrainian Petrykivka decorative painting tradition of the Dnipropetrovsk region — the production of the distinctive Ukrainian floral and plant decorative paintings whose characteristic continuous flowing botanical vocabulary (primarily…
Large-scale geometric star, sun, and moon paintings applied directly to the sides and gables of Pennsylvania German barns beginning around 1830, historically an agricultural and folk-artistic expression tied to farmers' almanac star-sign…
A transitional Plains narrative art form in which warrior-artists adapted the older tradition of painting personal exploits on buffalo hide to the pencil, ink, and colored-pencil pages of trade or captured account ledger books, flourishing…
Sand drawing (nalot in some Vanuatu languages) is the Vanuatu tradition of drawing complex geometric figures in sand or soft earth in a single continuous line — the finger never lifting from the surface from start to finish.
The making and restoration of mosaics at the Studio del Mosaico Vaticano (Vatican Mosaic Studio), a continuously operating workshop tracing its origin to 1578–1580, when Pope Gregory XIII commissioned painter Girolamo Muziano to decorate…