Cambodia · Stone Carving / Architectural Craft
ឆ្លាក់ថ្ម (chhlak thma — stone carving)
The carving of sandstone relief and sculpture in the Angkorian tradition, and its continuation in restoration and contemporary workshops around Siem Reap. Angkor's sandstone was soft enough to carve readily yet durable enough to last centuries; reliefs covered walls, lintels and pillars, and unfinished blocks still carry chisel marks. Today, carvers trained in the tradition work on conservation and replica commissions.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · UNESCO World Heritage (Angkor site); Cambodia national ICH (carving tradition)
Hol is the Khmer weft-ikat silk tradition, historically associated with court and ceremonial cloth.
Pidan is Cambodia's large-format Buddhist temple hanging silk (1.5m x 3m), woven with figurative Buddhist narrative scenes using supplementary weft tapestry technique — small color bobbins passed through specific warp areas to build each…
The engraving of flattened copper sheet — often subsequently silver-plated — into decorative and ceremonial objects at Koh Chen and neighboring Prek Kdam villages in Kandal province, a craft distinct from the archive's existing Khmer…
The carving of wood into architectural ornament, devotional statuary, and household ritual objects — one of the Khmer 'principal crafts' alongside weaving, silver- and goldsmithing, and stone sculpture, according to standard art-historical…
Tampuan weaving is the back-strap loom textile tradition of the Tampuan people of Ratanakiri Province — one of Cambodia's largest highland minority groups.
The Bunong (also known as Phnong) people of Mondulkiri Province maintain one of Cambodia's most technically complex basket weaving traditions — using rattan and bamboo to produce carrying baskets (khnang), rice wine jar covers, and ritual…
The carving of locally quarried stone by families of stone carvers in Huambocancha Alta and the Porcón area, a few kilometers north of the city of Cajamarca in the northern Peruvian Andes.
The granite dry-stone walling tradition of Dartmoor — the construction of the characteristic double-faced granite walls (sometimes called Devon hedges when earth-filled) that divide the Dartmoor moorland and its in-bye fields using the…
Mandalay marble Buddha carving (ကျောက်ဆစ် kyaukse) is the sculptural tradition centered in the Sagyin and Kyaukse districts north of Mandalay — using white Sagyin marble to produce Buddha images in the Mandalay style: seated in meditation…
The mining, lapidary cutting, and jewelry-setting of opal from Pedro II, a municipality in northern Piauí that holds Brazil's and the Americas' only reserve of noble (precious) opal — the world's second largest such deposit after…
The amber rosary making tradition of Gdańsk — the threading of Baltic amber beads into Roman Catholic rosaries, a tradition that combines the Gdańsk amber working heritage (CRAFT-1364) with the specific requirements of rosary bead size…
The hand-digging and manual recovery of ruby-bearing gravel by artisanal miners, locally termed garimpeiros, at the Montepuez deposit in Cabo Delgado province, northern Mozambique, following the deposit's 2009 discovery in the M'sawize…