France · Forest craft; Agricultural craft; Landes heritage
Levée du Liège des Landes
The hand-harvesting of cork bark from cork oak (Quercus suber) in the Landes de Gascogne — the northernmost cork oak zone in France. Cork is stripped from the living tree using a specialized axe (merlin à liège) every 9–12 years. The tree must not be wounded during stripping or it dies; the harvester reads the correct separation plane between cork bark and living cambium by feel and sound.
Risk level: Endangered · Not listed; included in Inventaire du Patrimoine Culturel Immatériel français
Wallpaper printed by hand from relief-carved wooden blocks, one block for each color and each part of the design, onto paper that has first been brushed with a solid ground color.
Épernay, in the Marne department, is home to the last operating corsetry workshop in France — the Chantelle factory, where roughly 85 seamstresses hand- and machine-construct structured lingerie using techniques with no remaining external…
A contemporary studio practice by Karine, working as La Dentellière de Carton near Mougins on the French Riviera.
The cutting and laying of wood veneer marquetry — pictorial and geometric patterns assembled from thin wood veneers and inlaid into furniture surfaces — in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine workshops, Paris's historic cabinet-making district.
The application of gold leaf (23.75-carat gold beaten to 0.1 micron thickness) to furniture, picture frames, and architectural elements in the Paris tradition.
The making of rag paper (papier chiffon) in the Charente mills — a tradition that made Angoulême the center of French paper production for three centuries and supplied the Paris publishing and printing industry.
The Slovenian Carniolan beekeeping tradition — the keeping of the indigenous Carniolan bee (Apis mellifera carnica — the most widely used bee breed globally outside of its Slovenian homeland) in the distinctive Slovenian painted panel…
The preparation of ugali, Kenya's national staple dish, a stiff, dense porridge made by gradually stirring maize flour (or, regionally, millet, sorghum, or cassava flour) into boiling water with a wooden spoon (mwiko) until a firm,…
The preparation of funge, Angola's national staple dish, a smooth, dense, stretchy porridge made by gradually whisking cassava flour (or, in some regional and family variants, cornmeal or millet flour) into boiling salted water.
The harvesting, fermentation, drying, roasting, and bean-to-bar processing of cacao by farmers and artisanal chocolatiers of São Tomé, a small Gulf of Guinea island nation historically known as 'Ilhas do Cacau' (Islands of Cocoa), whose…
The Cretan tsikoudia (raki) distilling tradition — the production of the traditional Cretan grape pomace distillate made annually from the grape skins and seeds remaining after wine pressing, whose specific Cretan character (lighter and…
The Bulgarian rose oil distilling tradition of the Rose Valley (Rozova Dolina) — the production of the precious natural rose oil (атар от рози) from the Rosa damascena grown in the Kazanlak valley whose specific combination of the…