Brazil · Palm fiber weaving and seed-carving jewelry
Trançado de Piaçava / Marfim Vegetal
The weaving of piaçava (Attalea funifera, a palm species endemic to Bahia's coastal Atlantic Forest) into baskets, trays, and sousplats, and the carving of the same palm's seed (coco de piaçava) into 'vegetable ivory' jewelry, practiced by the quilombola community of Lagoa Santa, between the municipalities of Ituberá and Nilo Peçanha in Bahia's Baixo Sul region. Formally certified as a remnant quilombo community by the Fundação Palmares in 2005 and with its roughly 652-hectare territory delimited by INCRA in 2014, Lagoa Santa's approximately 200 residents historically depended on piaçava fiber sales for cordage, brushes, and brooms — a market that collapsed as the fiber lost commercial value to more profitable crops, above all cacao, directly threatening both community subsistence and the surrounding Atlantic Forest, since piaçava groves were increasingly cleared for cacao cultivation. Named master José Roque Azevedo Assunção has been specifically credited with maintaining Lagoa Santa's piaçava-weaving technique, while the collective Joias do Quilombo — fifteen young people and older women of the community — now produces sophisticated, colored-thread-embroidered woven pieces and carved vegetable-ivory jewelry through the Associação dos Produtores da Floresta (APF), reviving sustainable palm-fiber extraction as a genuine economic alternative that directly incentivizes preserving, rather than clearing, the piaçava groves.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not Applicable — no UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage inscription exists for this craft at time of writing, though the Lagoa Santa community itself holds formal Brazilian federal quilombo certification (Fundação Palmares, 2005) and territorial demarcation (INCRA, 2014)
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