Binakol / Inlabbè
The Itneg (Tinguian) people of Abra province and the Kalinga people of Kalinga province — both in the Cordillera mountains of northern Luzon — produce distinct but related backstrap loom weaving traditions. The Itneg binakol is the most visually distinctive Philippine textile: a cotton cloth with a specific optical illusion pattern (concentric rectangles that appear to rotate or spiral when viewed) produced by a precise color sequence in the warp and weft. The binakol illusion is entirely structural — it emerges from the color sequence alone, requiring no supplementary weft or special technique. The Kalinga tradition (inlabbè) uses a supplementary warp technique on the backstrap loom to produce raised geometric patterns. Both traditions are woven on the backstrap loom with the weaver's body as the tension mechanism.
Risk level: Endangered · Not inscribed internationally; Philippine national ICH recognition
The hand-tapped tattooing tradition of the Butbut people of Kalinga province, northern Luzon, applied by a mambabatok (traditional tattooist) using a thorn from a pomelo or calamansi tree affixed to a bamboo stick, struck rhythmically with…
The forging of the balisong — a folding pocketknife distinguished by two handles that counter-rotate around the blade's tang, concealing the blade within the handles when closed and permitting rapid one-handed deployment through a…
Okir (or ukkil) is the defining visual language of Maranao culture — an intricate flowing arabesque composed of interlocking naga (serpent), pako rabong (fern frond), and geometric forms carved into wood, incised into metal (brassware),…
Baguio City — UNESCO Creative City of Crafts and Folk Art since 2017 — is the center of Cordillera metalwork tradition, bringing together the silversmithing and jewelry-making traditions of the Ibaloi, Bontoc, Ifugao, and other Cordillera…
Inabel is the traditional handwoven cotton textile of the Ilocano people of northern Luzon — produced on the pedal loom (tida) in a range of patterns from simple stripes (abel) to the complex pinilian supplementary weft and the highly…
T'nalak is the sacred abacá ikat cloth of the T'boli people of Lake Sebu, South Cotabato, Mindanao — woven exclusively by women who have received their designs through a kena (dream) in which Fu Dalu, the T'boli goddess of abacá, appears…
Adras (Адрас) is the second major Uzbek ikat tradition — using a silk warp resist-dyed with the abr technique woven against a plain cotton weft.
A distinct Andean weaving tradition of the Kallawaya people, itinerant herbalist healers of Bautista Saavedra province, La Paz department, whose textiles are woven with detailed figurative motifs of regional flora and fauna reflecting the…
Atlas (Атлас) is Uzbekistan's pure silk warp ikat — the most technically demanding of the three Uzbek ikat traditions, using a warp resist-dyeing system called abr (cloud) in which the silk warp threads are bound in a specific sequence…
A cotton hammock-weaving tradition of the Wapishana people of Guyana's southern Rupununi savannah, widely regarded as among the finest in South America.
A hand-loom weaving tradition of Santiago del Estero province, Argentina's oldest continuously inhabited region, in which women (teleras) card, spin, dye, and weave sheep's wool into ponchos, colchas (bedspreads), blankets, table runners,…
A wool-weaving tradition on the Spanish-introduced two-pedal treadle loom, fusing colonial European technology with a Zapotec design language over 2,500 years old — geometric patterns drawn directly from the stone mosaics of the nearby…