潮绣 (Cháo Xiù)
Chaozhou embroidery (潮绣) is one of China's Four Famous Embroideries alongside Su, Xiang, and Shu — and the most technically extreme of the four. Its defining characteristic is垫高绣 (diàn gāo xiù) — raised or padded embroidery — in which layers of cotton padding or cardboard are built up beneath the silk stitching to create three-dimensional relief up to 3cm high. Gold and silver thread couching over the raised forms produces a repoussé-like metallic surface on silk ground cloth. The procedural knowledge encompasses both the structural padding engineering (calculating how many layers produce the correct relief without distorting the ground cloth) and the surface stitching vocabulary — over 30 stitch types are used in a single complex composition, each assigned to specific subject matter by tradition.
Risk level: Endangered · China National ICH List (2006)
Printing from cast lead-alloy Chinese type: the compositor picks individual characters from type cases, sets them on a rack, locks the forme and prints on a hand-fed or automatic platen press.
The hand carving and painting of mahjong tiles.
The making of three-dimensional paper objects on a bamboo frame, mounted with colored paper or silk and then painted and decorated.
The building of traditional wooden boats in Hong Kong's boatyards — sampans, fishing boats, junks and dragon boats — by shipwrights who bend hardwood planks around an internal frame and caulk the hull with bamboo fiber and tar.
The hand making of decorative fasteners for the traditional Chinese long gown (cheongsam or qipao).
The shaping of hot sugar syrup into animals, mythical beasts and blown forms by pulling, pinching, cutting with scissors and blowing air through a straw into a sugar ball.
A distinctive Crow beading tradition recognized for its use of overlaid ('spot' or appliqué) stitch combined with bold, large-scale geometric and floral-influenced forms and a characteristic pastel and jewel-tone palette, applied…
A Northern Plains beading tradition of the Blackfeet Nation of Montana, part of the broader Blackfoot Confederacy that also includes the Kainai, Piikani, and Siksika Nations across the border in Alberta, Canada, known for bold geometric…
A combined woodworking, hide, and beadwork craft producing the rigid-backed, richly decorated infant carrier boards used across Southern Plains nations, integrating a wooden frame, brain-tanned hide wrapping, and dense beaded or quilled…
A distinctive floral beadwork style that fused Indigenous porcupine-quillwork design sensibility with French silk-embroidery patterns taught by Catholic mission-school nuns at Red River, becoming so visually associated with the Métis that…
Densely beaded horse regalia — masks, martingales (chest ornaments), and saddle blankets — reflecting the central historical importance of the horse in Crow and Cheyenne social and ceremonial life, among the largest-scale beadwork objects…
The making of Plauener Spitze — the chemically-ground-out machine embroidery that made Plauen the European center of lace production from the 1880s onward, after the invention of the Ätzspitze (chemical lace) process: an underlying fabric…