Malaysia · Beadwork / Textiles
Manik Kelabit / Tenun Kelabit
The Kelabit people of the Sarawak-Kalimantan highland plateau — one of the most remote communities in Borneo, centered in the Bario highlands — produce beadwork and weaving traditions that reflect their highland isolation and their sophisticated rice-farming culture. Kelabit beadwork uses ancient glass trade beads (some 500+ years old) alongside contemporary beads — the ancient beads are heirlooms passed through generations and never replaced by modern equivalents. The specific pattern vocabulary of Kelabit beadwork encodes social rank, family lineage, and spiritual protection in a system that only trained community members can read. Kelabit highland weaving (using cotton and natural dyes) produces garments with a cooler highland palette distinct from lowland Sarawak traditions.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · Not inscribed
The hand-kneading, rolling and sun-drying of fragrant wood-powder paste onto bamboo rod cores to make joss sticks.
The hand-weaving of commercially sourced rattan and bamboo into furniture, baskets, birdcages, and household goods associated with Seang Hin Leong, a Chinese-Malaysian family shophouse business at 393 Lebuh Pantai (Beach Street), George…
The carving of Chinese calligraphic characters and auspicious motifs into wooden plaques and signboards, historically finished by one of several possible methods — painted lettering, gold-paint lettering, or gold-leaf gilding, per…
Bespoke songkok making: a shaped paper or cardboard inner frame is covered with fitted velvet or other cloth, lined, machine-stitched and finished by hand, each cap adjusted to the wearer's head.
The forging of the keris, the wavy or straight-bladed dagger central to Malay cultural identity, made by master blacksmiths known as Empu or pandai besi through repeated cycles of heating, hammering, folding, quenching, tempering, and…
Wax-resist batik drawn with a canting: the design is traced in hot wax, and the wax-resisted cloth is then colored by hand.
The hand-embroidery of the kummah, a round skull cap with a circular top sewn onto cylindrical sides, worn by Omani men as an essential and legally protected element of national dress.
Tankha metal thread embroidery is Nepal's tradition of producing Buddhist ceremonial textiles using gold and silver metal thread couched onto silk backgrounds — producing altar coverings, ceremonial bags, and the decorative textile borders…
A brocade-and-embroidery tradition of Santo Tomás Chichicastenango centered on the k'ot, a double-headed eagle motif understood by K'iche' Maya weavers as representing a great god of two natures — one face turned toward good, one toward…
The hand embroidery of elaborate linen bedspreads in Castelo Branco — the most technically and historically significant Portuguese bedspread tradition, distinguished by dense, all-over silk thread embroidery covering the entire linen…
Bobbin lace made by crossing and twisting pairs of thread-wound bobbins over a pricked card pattern on a bolster pillow.
The embroidery of gold and silver thread onto velvet and silk for Semana Santa processional mantles (mantos de la Virgen) and ecclesiastical vestments in Sevilla — the most materially valuable embroidery tradition in Spain.