United States · Pottery / Ceramics
Acoma pottery-making tradition (Keresan family terminology varies)
Extremely thin-walled, hand-coiled pottery made from clay tempered with ground potsherds, prized for fine geometric and fine-line painted designs and for walls thin enough that a small clay impurity can cause a firing failure.
Risk level: Endangered · Not Applicable — the United States is not a State Party to the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage; no US technique can be formally ICH-inscribed regardless of significance.
An eight-pointed diamond-pieced star quilt pattern that replaced painted buffalo-hide ceremonial robes after the near-extermination of the buffalo herds, becoming, within roughly a generation, one of the central symbols of Lakota honor,…
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…
The oldest Plains embroidery technique, in which softened and dyed porcupine quills are sewn or wrapped onto hide, birchbark, or sinew-strung bases in geometric and symbolic patterns, largely supplanted by glass-bead trade goods in the…
A Plains-originated beading technique in which short strung rows of glass beads are tacked to hide or fabric in regular parallel lanes, producing a distinctive ribbed, slightly raised surface well suited to the bold geometric designs…
A distinctive Northwest Coast woodworking technique in which a single cedar plank is precisely kerfed (grooved) at three corners, steamed until pliable, and bent into a rectangular, watertight box with only one seam requiring fastening — a…
The painting of bold, symmetrical geometric designs onto stiff, dampened rawhide before it is folded into an envelope-style carrying case, developed to meet the portable-storage needs of horse-mounted nomadic Plains life.
The entirely wheel-less, tool-free hand-building of terracotta pottery by Kabye women of the Kara region, northern Togo, an essentially exclusively feminine activity practiced most notably in and around the village of Pya.
The making of the decorative bas-relief sprigs (individually applied relief elements) for Wedgwood Jasperware — the unglazed fine stoneware with colored body (the iconic Wedgwood blue, sage green, or black) and applied white relief…
The Bolesławiec stoneware pottery tradition of Lower Silesia — the distinctive blue, white, and cream stoneware decorated with the characteristic peacock-eye (pawie oko) and dot-in-circle sponge-stamp patterns that have made Bolesławiec…
The Belleek porcelain tradition of Fermanagh — the making of the characteristic cream-colored, lustered Parian china that has been produced at the Belleek Pottery (established 1857) on the banks of the River Erne, using the specific local…
Yixing zisha (宜兴紫砂壶) is one of the most distinctive ceramic traditions in the world — producing unglazed stoneware teapots from a unique iron-rich purple-red clay found only in Yixing, Jiangsu, that absorbs tea oils over years of use to…
Jun ware (钧瓷) is the imperial Song Dynasty ceramic tradition of Yuzhou, Henan — one of China's Five Great Kilns — distinguished by its opalescent glazes that shift unpredictably between blue, purple, red, and gray in a single firing.