Cerámica de Chulucanas; negativo/negrado (the resist-and-smoke technique specifically)
A hand-thrown and hand-burnished pottery tradition from Chulucanas, Piura region, on Peru's northern coast, reviving the pre-Columbian Vicús culture's (c. 400–150 BCE) negative-resist and smoke-reduction firing techniques. Potters coat a burnished piece with a liquid clay slip, selectively remove it to expose the design areas they wish to blacken, then fire the piece in a wood kiln before smoking it two to three times over mango leaves, whose resin darkens the exposed clay to a range of tones from warm brown to solid black against the piece's natural terracotta or white-slip background — a resist-and-reduction method rediscovered directly from Vicús archaeological ceramics unearthed by looters near the town in the 1960s.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not documented as UNESCO-inscribed; Peru is a State Party to the 2003 ICH Convention
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