Singapore · Basketry / Woven Craft
Anyaman Ketupat
Ketupat weaving is the traditional Malay craft of folding and interlacing fresh young coconut or palm leaves into a diamond-shaped pouch for cooking rice — the raw rice placed inside the woven pouch and boiled until the rice expands to fill the pouch completely, producing the characteristic compressed, square rice cake. The weaving requires fresh leaves (within hours of harvest for maximum flexibility), a specific interlocking pattern that seals the pouch while allowing water flow, and the correct weave density — too tight and the rice cannot expand; too loose and the rice escapes. Anita Tompang, identified through NHB's Craft X Design program, has 50 years of ketupat weaving experience and has hand-woven ketupat for every Hari Raya (Eid) for over 20 years — making her Singapore's most documented ketupat practitioner. The craft is practiced across the Malay world but is declining sharply as commercially pre-woven ketupat pouches replace hand-woven.
Risk level: Endangered · Not inscribed
The cutting and sewing of made-to-measure shirts, trousers and suits in Singapore by family-run shophouse tailors, a trade built by Chinese migrant tailors from the 1880s.
Kim Sin (金身, literally "golden body" in Hokkien) is the Singapore Chinese craft of hand-carving and restoring wooden statues of Taoist deities for temple worship — a permanent devotional object, carved and painted piece by piece, distinct…
The Singapore straw fire dragon is a ritual object built once every three years for Mun San Fook Tuck Chee Temple in Geylang, the only temple in Singapore to perform this dragon dance, held on the second day of the second lunar month to…
Chinese seal carving (zhuan ke) is the ancient practice of carving Chinese characters in reverse intaglio into stone, ivory, jade, or wood to create personal name seals (chops) used for official signatures in Chinese cultural practice.
Singapore's rattan furniture tradition is one of the last surviving furniture-making craft practices in the city-state — a tradition of constructing chairs, tables, and storage items from rattan cane using techniques brought from Guangdong…
The Foochow Chinese lantern tradition of Singapore — specifically the hand-made split bamboo and rice paper lanterns produced for the Mid-Autumn Festival and Chinese New Year — is one of the most visually iconic and most endangered craft…
Inle Lake lotus fiber weaving (ကြာသီးထည် kyar thi hta — 'lotus stalk textile') is one of the rarest textile traditions in the world — practiced only on Inle Lake in Shan State, Myanmar, and in a small number of locations in Cambodia.
The hand-weaving of vacoas (pandanus) and vetiver leaves into baskets, handbags, wallets, and hats, a technique mastered on the Mauritian island of Rodrigues and practiced by contemporary craftswomen including Anouchka Pierre Louis, who…
The hand-braiding and weaving of Panama's own native straw hat — genuinely made in Panama, unlike the internationally famous "Panama hat," which is in fact Ecuadorian — using bellota palm fiber for the base braid and a distinctive black…
A tradition of basket and hat weaving from the coastal and inland areas of Lazio — using rush, straw, and willow from the Pontine plain, the Tiber valley, and the coastal marshes — producing domestic baskets, hats, and decorative objects…
The hand-weaving of palm leaves into baskets, hats, mats, and cordage by artisans of Djerba, a small Mediterranean island off Tunisia's coast, dotted throughout with palm trees that supply the craft's raw material.
The making of the traditional bamboo bow (zhu) and arrow (da) used to play archery, Bhutan's national sport since 1971.