White oak basket; split-oak basket (regional terms vary)
Ribbed and split-oak basketry made from young white oak saplings riven by hand into thin, supple splits, brought to the Southern Highlands by English and Scottish settlers who traditionally worked in willow, and adapted to the region's abundant white oak in forms including the distinctive twin-lobed egg (or 'gizzard') basket.
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.
The design and hand-fabrication of water-resistant earrings and bangles from recycled newspaper and cardboard by American designer Luda, working under the name Alla Maude in Long Beach, New York, part of the same wider international…
A distinctive stoneware tradition combining English, European, and Asian ceramic techniques with the skilled labor and artistic voice of enslaved African American potters in the Edgefield District of South Carolina, producing utilitarian…
The hand-winding and stitching of dried broomcorn (a sorghum variety) around a wooden handle using foot-tensioned twine, producing functional and decorative hearth brooms and whisks in forms including the turkey wing, hawk tail, and…
Densely beaded shoulder bags and regalia elements combining fine glass-bead embroidery with geometric and floral motifs, developed as a significant Southeastern decorative art form following European bead trade and continuing today within…
Hand-carved paired hickory sticks used in Cherokee stickball (anetso), a two-handed ball-catching game considered the ancestor of modern lacrosse and historically used both as sport and as a ceremonial alternative to settling disputes that…
A West African coiling technique carried across the transatlantic slave trade and adapted in the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry, originating as bulrush fanner baskets used to winnow threshed rice on plantations and evolving, as rice…
The plaiting (kunti) of young palm tree leaves, reeds, grass, and sorghum stalks into an exceptionally diverse range of functional and decorative household objects by women of the Nara people, a small (approximately 1.5% of national…
The hand-weaving of ilala palm fiber into distinctively formed baskets -- a square woven base opening into a wide round rim -- by Tonga women of Zambia's Southern Province, near the Zambezi River.
The weaving of finely patterned raffia palm-fiber cushion covers and presentation cloths by Vili weavers of the historic Loango Kingdom, on the Atlantic coast of what is now the Republic of the Congo, produced from at least the early 16th…
Beppu Take Zaiku (別府竹細工) is Japan's foremost bamboo craft tradition — centered in Beppu City, Oita Prefecture (Kyushu) and encompassing the widest range of bamboo weaving structures of any single tradition in the world: madake bamboo (真竹…
The weaving of spiral-pattern baskets from sisal fiber by women of the Kikuyu (Agikuyu), Kamba, and Taita communities of central and eastern Kenya.
The weaving and cut-pile embroidery of raffia palm fiber into geometrically patterned prestige cloth by the Kuba Kingdom peoples -- an 18-subgroup Bantu confederacy dominated by the Bushoong -- of the Kasai and Sankuru river region,…