磁州窑装饰 (Cízhōu Yáo Zhuāngshì)
Cizhou ware (磁州窑) is the great northern Chinese folk ceramic tradition of Cixian County, Hebei — the most prolific and technically diverse of China's ceramic traditions, spanning from the 10th century to the present. Unlike the monochrome court ceramics of the Five Great Kilns, Cizhou is distinguished by its painted decoration — bold black iron-oxide brushwork on a white slip ground, producing flowers, fish, dragons, and calligraphic inscriptions with the expressive freedom of ink painting. The procedural knowledge centers on the sgrafitto technique (划花 huà huā — scratching through a black slip coating to reveal white slip beneath), the iron-oxide painting technique (where the brush must be loaded precisely to produce the characteristic 'broken brushwork' — a stroke that fades from dark to light within a single pull), and the white slip application that creates the ground for both techniques.
Risk level: Endangered · China National ICH List (2006)
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 making of three-dimensional paper objects on a bamboo frame, mounted with colored paper or silk and then painted and decorated.
Sichuan lacquerware (四川漆器) is one of China's oldest lacquer traditions, predating the Han Dynasty and documented in excavated burial objects from Chu Kingdom sites (4th–3rd century BCE).
Shu brocade (蜀锦) is the imperial silk weaving tradition of Chengdu, Sichuan — one of China's Three Great Brocades alongside Nanjing Yunjin and Song brocade, and the only one with an unbroken 2,000-year production history.
Guangdong ivory carving (广雕) represents one of the most technically extraordinary carving traditions in the world, distinguished by the concentric sphere (套球 tào qiú) — a single ivory tusk carved into a series of 20–40 freely rotating…
The Fuchuan (福船) is the traditional ocean-going wooden vessel of Fujian province — the primary ship type of China's Maritime Silk Road trade for over a millennium, and the vessel type used by Zheng He's fleet in the 15th century.
The manufacture of the turbah, a small clay tablet formed from the sacred soil of Karbala, Iraq, used by Shia Muslims to prostrate upon during the daily ritual prayer (salat), directly produced at a dedicated turbah manufacturing factory…
The wheel-throwing of clay vessels in A'ali, a village in Bahrain specifically renowned for pottery and ceramic art, formally documented within Bahrain's own official UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage inventory under the craft domain…
Pakistan's blue pottery tradition — called neeli mitti (نیلی مٹی — 'blue clay') — is distinct from the better-known Jaipur Indian blue pottery in using a higher proportion of quartz in the clay body and a more opaque tin-white glaze that…
Two related dark-material craft traditions of the Achi' Maya town of Rabinal: the hand-carving of geometric designs into polished black jícaras (dried gourds from the calabash tree, Crescentia cujete, also called guacales) to a…
The wheel-throwing and hand-painting of ceramic vases, bowls, jars, and sculptures in Lalejin, a small town near Hamedan directly and repeatedly documented across sources as the pottery capital of Iran and the source of the country's…
A traditional industry in Qatar, pottery was historically necessary for food preservation, water storage, cooking, and a wide variety of household uses, with vessels varying distinctly in size and shape according to their specific…