Canada · Graphic Art / Dental Craft
Mazinibaganjigan (Ojibwe); mazinashkwemaganjigan (Northwestern Ontario Ojibwe); njigan (Wisconsin Ojibwe)
An Indigenous art form in which small pieces of thin, folded birch bark are bitten with the canine teeth to create intricate, symmetrical geometric and pictorial designs, historically used as an entertaining storytelling activity and as a template source for quillwork patterns, today sustained by an estimated dozen or fewer practitioners across Canada and the United States.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · Not Applicable — Canada is not a State Party to the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage; no Canadian technique can be formally ICH-inscribed regardless of significance. Indigenous advocates in Canada have publicly called for ratification.
The construction of multi-layered waterproof or insulated sealskin and caribou-skin boots using chewed-softened skin and a partial-penetration waterproof stitch, historically requiring significant physical strength to sew through thick,…
A distinctive Inuit women's parka engineered with an oversized hood and a capacious internal pouch (the amaut) allowing an infant to be carried directly against the mother's back in shared body warmth from birth until roughly age two,…
The construction of a traditional Arctic travel sled using two long wooden or, historically in wood-scarce regions, bone or antler runners connected by numerous lashed wooden crossbars, built without rigid fasteners so the entire structure…
The carving of a crescent- or oval-shaped soapstone lamp burning rendered seal or other animal fat with a moss or arctic-cotton-grass wick, the primary historic source of light, heat, cooking, and clothes-drying for Inuit households across…
The carving of figurative and narrative sculpture from regionally sourced stone — principally serpentine from Kinngait (Cape Dorset), basalt from Arviat and Rankin Inlet, and other locally distinct stone types — developed from…
A relief printmaking technique in which an Inuit printmaker carves away the surface of a flattened stone block to leave a raised design translated from an artist's original drawing, then inks and hand-prints the design onto paper,…
A self-invented sculptural technique, developed and copyrighted by Tarija artisan Ruth Mercado since 2002, that builds miniature figures of rural chapaco men and women — depicted farming, making music, tending children — entirely from…
The specialized knowledge and manual skill of measuring, calculating, and equitably distributing underground water shares drawn from foggaras — gently sloped underground galleries that tap aquifer water and channel it by gravity to Saharan…
The layering of naturally colored sand within glass bottles to compose detailed desert scenes -- undulating dunes, camels, and, at the buyer's request, names or words -- a distinctive Jordanian craft directly self-taught as a child by…
The hand-dipping and shaping of beeswax and paraffin candles into swirling layers of color, braided forms, and symbolic motifs, a craft the mystical city of Tzfat (Safed) has been associated with for decades, directly inspired by the…
Thai bodywork in which practitioners use hands, elbows, knees and feet to work along the sen — lines understood to cross the body — aiming to rebalance body and energy and the four elements.
The bath attendant’s hands-on technique in the Turkish hammam: after the bather sweats on the heated marble platform (göbek taşı), the attendant rinses them from a bowl, scrubs with a coarse kese mitt until dead skin rolls away, then soaps…