ក្រមា (Krama)
Krama is Cambodia's defining national textile — a checked or striped cotton cloth worn universally as scarf, head covering, baby carrier and Buddhist offering. Unlike hol (luxury court silk), krama is democratic and everyday. It survived the Khmer Rouge period more completely than luxury traditions because the Khmer Rouge themselves wore red-and-white krama as their identity cloth — creating a profound ethical complexity: krama is simultaneously the symbol of the genocide and one of the few Cambodian textiles with partial transmission continuity through it. Standard pattern: 10-15 warp threads per color block, even beat produces square checks.
Risk level: Endangered · Cambodia national ICH list
The carving of sandstone relief and sculpture in the Angkorian tradition, and its continuation in restoration and contemporary workshops around Siem Reap.
Cambodian silversmithing, centered on villages such as Por Touch (Kandal province, near Phnom Penh) and Koh Chin, where silver is shaped and embossed into lidded boxes in animal and fruit forms — fish, chickens, ducks and large…
Khmer Buddhist bronze casting uses lost-wax technique with the Bayon-period iconometric canon (12th-13th century Jayavarman VII).
Cambodian lacquerware made with resin tapped from a local tree (Melanorrhea / Gluta species).
Sbek Thom (large shadow theater) uses non-articulated puppets about two meters high, each cut as leather openwork from a single hide, dyed with a solution made from the bark of the Kandaol tree, then drawn, cut out and painted.
Two defining Cambodian instruments: the chapei dong veng (two-stringed long-neck lute for philosophical poetry performance) and roneat ek (21-key bamboo xylophone).
A material culture complex practiced by the Suruí people of Rondônia state, who call themselves Paiter — 'gente de verdade, nós mesmos' (true people, ourselves) — speakers of a Tupi language of the Mondé linguistic family.
The making of burel — a dense, felted wool cloth traditionally woven by shepherds in the Serra da Estrela region of Beira Baixa for cold-weather capes and blankets, and now revived as a contemporary design material.
Dumbara (දුම්බර) is the Kandyan region's distinctive weft-float weaving tradition — producing textiles and floor mats with geometric patterns of remarkable mathematical density.
The daily tapping of wild rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis, seringueira) along a fixed forest circuit (estrada de seringa) connecting 100 to 200 trees, and the transformation of the collected latex — traditionally boiled into export balls,…
Tibetan carpet weaving in Nepal is maintained by Tibetan refugee communities in Boudhanath and Jawalakhel using the Tibetan loop-pile technique: a temporary rod laid across the warp, wool looped around both warp threads and rod, cut along…
Cadjan (කැදිලි — kadili in Sinhala) is the ancient Sri Lankan tradition of weaving coconut palm leaves (Cocos nucifera) or palmyra palm leaves (Borassus flabellifer) into panels for thatching, screens, food containers, ceremonial objects,…