Austria · Bladesmithing; Metal craft; Upper Austrian heritage
Sensenschmiede — Österreichische Sensenmacher
The Austrian scythe making tradition of the Steyr and Kirchdorf regions of Upper Austria — one of the most historically significant precision blade-making traditions in the world, whose specific scythe blades were the dominant grass-cutting tool of pre-industrial European and colonial American agriculture. The Austrian Sensenmacher reads the correct blade temper through a flex-and-ring combined assessment — bending the completed scythe blade to a specific arc and simultaneously tapping it to read the acoustic ring that indicates the correct hardness-and-flexibility balance for a working agricultural blade.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · Not listed; Austrian scythe making on the Upper Austrian national heritage inventory
The design and hand-fabrication of contemporary jewelry from corrugated cardboard and paper straws by Austrian artist Monica Peksa, part of the same wider international coiled/compressed cardboard jewelry movement documented in Italy,…
The Gmundner Keramik tradition — the making of the distinctive green-flamed earthenware of the Salzkammergut town of Gmunden, whose characteristic irregular green flame decoration on a cream ground has been the defining Austrian folk…
The Styrian iron working tradition of the Erzberg — the making of forged iron objects from the ore of the Steirische Erzberg (Styrian Iron Mountain), the world's largest open-cast iron ore mine, which has supplied Styrian ironmasters for…
The Tiroler Graukäse tradition — the making of the distinctive acid-curd gray rind cheese of the Tyrolean Inn valley and Zillertal, which unlike all other cheeses in the CRAFT European archive is made without rennet — using only the…
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…
The Tyrolean Dirndl embroidery tradition — the making of the decorative embroidery on the Dirndl (the traditional Austrian and Bavarian folk costume blouse and apron) whose specific chain stitch, satin stitch, and eyelet combination…
The Swamimalai bronze casting tradition of Tamil Nadu is the living continuation of the Chola-period lost-wax casting that produced the greatest sculptural bronzes in world art history — the dancing Shiva (Nataraja), the walking Vishnu,…
The precious metal refining tradition of Frankfurt — the German financial capital whose gold and silver trade (and later the Degussa/Umicore refinery) made it a significant node in the European precious metal economy.
Kanzeku (金細工, 'metal work', read kuganizēku) was the Ryukyu court trade that made every kind of metalwork except iron under royal commission.
The hand-crafting of gold and silver jewelry within Bourj Hammoud, a densely packed Beirut district founded by survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and expanded mostly during the 1930s, home today to around 230,000 people of Armenian…
The forging and silversmithing of the khanjar, Oman's curved, sheathed national dagger, a craft directly comparable to but genuinely distinct from the Saudi Arabian, Emirati, and Yemeni khanjar/jambiya traditions documented separately in…
A thirteenth-century tradition of inlaying gold and silver into bronze and brass vessels, centered in Mosul, Iraq, under the active patronage of the Zangid dynasty, developing an extraordinarily refined inlay technique, particularly in…