United States · Hunting Equipment / Woodcraft
Cherokee blowgun tradition (Tsalagi terminology varies)
The construction of long hunting blowguns from hollowed river cane, paired with fletched thistledown darts, historically used for hunting small game and birds and requiring both precise equipment-making skill and specialized stalking and marksmanship technique to use effectively.
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 cutting, drilling, and stringing of white and purple beads from quahog clam and whelk shell into belts and strings that serve as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy's living historical, legal, and diplomatic record, predating and central to…
A distinctive rattan and cane basketry tradition woven over a wooden mold with a solid turned wood base, developed by bored crewmen stationed for weeks at a time aboard the Nantucket Shoals lightship from the mid-19th century, later…
Dolls hand-formed from dried corn husks, deliberately made without a face, taught to children alongside a Three Sisters origin legend warning against vanity and self-regard — a distinct and openly shared craft, separate from any restricted…
The hand-hammering (repoussé) of sheet copper into hollow, three-dimensional wind-direction ornaments — roosters, running horses, ships, and other figures — for barns, churches, and civic buildings, a colonial New England tradition dating…
A fine twined basketry and matting tradition using split spruce root and pounded cedar bark, producing tightly woven baskets, hats, mats, and clothing elements historically watertight enough to hold liquids, decorated with false-embroidery…
An older, geometric twined-weaving tradition originating among the Tsimshian and retained by Tlingit and Haida weavers, using bold black-and-white (with sparing color accents) angular patterns evoking lightning and spider webs, understood…
A contemporary indigenous wood-sculpture movement founded in August 1988 by Guyanese Lokono (Arawak) artist and trained archaeologist George Simon (1947–2020), who established a drawing and design workshop in his native St.
Gasing is the traditional Malay spinning top — a precision-turned hardwood object that achieves extraordinary spin duration through the combination of material selection, lathe work, lead ballast placement, and surface finishing.
The Dala horse (Dalahäst) carving and painting tradition of Nusnäs in Dalarna — the making of the distinctive Swedish wooden horse carved from pine and painted in the characteristic Kurbits folk floral motifs that has become Sweden's most…
The Bregenzerwald Bauernmöbel tradition — the making of the specific Alpine furniture of the Bregenzerwald (Bregenz Forest) whose characteristic use of local maple and cherry woods in simple, robust forms represents the Vorarlberg…
A women's carving tradition among the Ndyuka Maroon people of Suriname, in which the dried shell of the calabash fruit is cut, hollowed, and carved into spoons and dishes bearing distinctive curvilinear designs.
The carving and painting of the maluwana, a large decorated wooden disc cut from the sacred Ceiba pentandra (silk-cotton/kapok) tree and suspended at the central peak of the tukusipan, the traditional round community house of the Wayana…