France · Printmaking; Folk art; Vosges heritage
Imagerie d'Épinal
Woodblock-printed popular images produced in Épinal since 1796, hand-colored by stencil (pochoir) in vivid flat colors. The Images d'Épinal — naive, brightly colored narrative prints depicting battles, fairy tales, saints, and domestic scenes — became the defining visual culture of 19th-century French rural life. The Imagerie d'Épinal is the sole surviving producer of the original tradition.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not listed
The tradition of the Paris haute couture embroidery house — the maison de broderie that maintains archives of historical stitch techniques and materials; develops new embroidery for each couture season; and trains the brodeurs who execute…
The making of needle lace in the Point de France tradition — the French royal lace established by Colbert in 1665 to replace Venetian lace imports and sustain the French state finances.
The hand-cutting, hand-stitching, and finishing of fine leather goods in France, centered on le point sellier (the saddle stitch) — a technique dating to the 13th century, developed originally for saddle-making, in which two needles share…
The making of fine leather gloves in the Paris tradition — cut from peau de chevreau (kid leather) or peau de porc (pigskin) in a single piece per hand, stretched over a wooden glove form, and hand-sewn with a specific saddle stitch.
The making of luxury hats (chapeaux de Paris) — specifically the haute couture millinery tradition of the modiste, who creates made-to-order hats using blocked felt or straw blocked to wooden hat forms (formier), wired and draped fabrics,…
The making of luxury buttons for haute couture — from natural materials (corne de bélier — ram's horn; galalithe — milk protein plastic from the early 20th century; mother-of-pearl; wood) and from cast metal, enamel, and fabric-covered…
The hand-engraving and ink-printing of Buddhist scriptures onto knot-free pear wood blocks, practiced at the Jinling Sutra Printing House in Nanjing (historically called Jinling) since Buddhist revivalist Yang Renshan founded it in 1866 —…
The hand-forming of washi paper in Mino, Gifu Prefecture, along a 1,300-year tradition traced to a surviving 702 CE household register document, still preserved in Nara's Shosoin Repository, made from paper mulberry (kozo) fiber grown…
A contemporary practice of Arabic calligraphy that moves from the manuscript, the building and the hand-lettered sign into painting: words rendered in many colors against a white ground, blending calligraphy and painting into one form.
Samarkand paper (Самарқанд қоғози) was the finest paper in the medieval Islamic world — mentioned by Arab geographers as early as 751 CE following the Battle of Talas, when Chinese papermakers captured by Arab forces introduced the…
Tibetan woodblock printing of texts by a two-person hand method: one person inks the carved block, the other applies the paper and rubs.
Vessels, translucent wall panels, lamps, table surfaces and framed images made from plant fibers formed in water (banana, waru and gamal, chosen according to the piece), related in principle to the Asian practice of forming a sheet from…