Bahamas · Palm and sisal fiber plaiting and weaving
Plait
The hand-plaiting of silver top palm leaf and sisal fiber into named traditional patterns — including peas 'n rice, Bahama Mama, Jacob's ladder, sour sop, pineapple, and fish pot — subsequently woven or sewn into baskets, hats, bags, and other goods. Nassau's straw work tradition, alongside Junkanoo, was explicitly cited by UNESCO in designating the city a Creative City of Crafts and Folk Arts, recognized as one of the two most outstanding Bahamian creative traditions. Straw workers traditionally begin learning at the feet of their mothers and grandmothers, and named contemporary makers — including internationally recognized bag designer Harl Taylor and practitioner Keesha Miller, known as 'The Plait Lady' — have elevated the craft's profile while sustaining direct sourcing relationships with weavers across the Family Islands.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not Applicable as a direct ICH inscription for the specific plaiting technique, though Nassau's designation as a UNESCO Creative City of Crafts and Folk Arts (2014, UNESCO Creative Cities Network) specifically names straw work as one of its two defining cited traditions
The cutting, carving, and polishing of queen conch (Strombus gigas) shells into jewelry, decorative sculpture, and functional objects such as bowls, prized for the shell's distinctive creamy-white base and soft pink interior coloration.
The hand-carving of local Bahamian hardwoods — including wild tamarind, horse flesh, lignum vitae, yellow wood, and mahogany — into figurative sculpture, marine-life pieces, and portraits of Bahamian cultural icons, described by…
The year-round hand-construction of elaborate, large-scale crepe-paper and cardboard costumes worn by competing groups in Nassau's Boxing Day and New Year's Day Junkanoo parades — the Bahamas' signature national cultural festival.
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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.'…
The weaving of the sebucán, an elongated, tube-shaped woven press made from interlaced vine or palm fiber, used across indigenous and criollo communities of eastern and southern Venezuela to extract prussic (hydrocyanic) acid from grated…
The coiled construction of the mesob, Ethiopia's iconic woven basket-table used for serving injera and shared communal meals, built by wrapping and stitching bundled plant fiber into a continuous outward spiral.
Hand-knotted and flat-woven goat-wool and sheep-wool carpets produced by Mozabite women of Algeria's M'Zab Valley (Ghardaïa Province), an Ibadi Muslim Berber community distinct from the Kabyle Amazigh of northern Algeria.
The harvesting and coiled weaving of dried doum palm leaf fiber into baskets, using a distinctive stitched-spiral technique in which the basket takes shape from its center outward, built up in a continuous woven strip mounted in a…
The hand-painting of hand-spun, strip-woven cotton cloth with fermented mud-based and natural vegetal pigment by Senufo artists of Korhogo, northern Côte d'Ivoire, producing textiles in earthy neutral tones of brown, black, and cream…
The handloom weaving of shemma, translucent white cotton cloth, by artisans of the Amhara region highlands, decorated with tibeb, a distinctive supplementary-weft or hand-embroidered border pattern woven using continuous extra weft threads…