Jippi jappa
A coiled basket-weaving technique of the Maya of Toledo District, southern Belize, using unspun fiber from the jippi jappa palm (Sabal mexicana), in which roughly eight plants' worth of prepared fiber is boiled to prevent fungal discoloration, then coiled upward from a woven base into vessels ranging from three-inch miniatures to two- to three-foot storage baskets — a hand-only technique its own practitioners and observers describe as never successfully modernized, since no mechanical process has replicated the quality of the hand-coiled result.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not currently inscribed on a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list under this specific technique; Belize is not listed as a State Party to the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in generally available current reference sources.
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