苗绣 (Miáo Xiù)
Miao embroidery (苗绣) is one of the most complex and historically rich embroidery traditions in the world — produced by the Miao people (known as Hmong in Southeast Asia) of Guizhou province and neighboring regions in southwest China. The Miao have no traditional written language; their embroidery is their archive — encoding history, mythology, cosmology, and genealogy in a visual vocabulary of extraordinary density that takes years to learn to read. The tradition encompasses over 170 distinct embroidery techniques across different Miao subgroups (Black Miao, Flower Miao, Long-horn Miao, etc.), including flat stitch, cross-stitch, satin stitch, chain stitch, and the most technically demanding — double-sided reversible embroidery on open-weave gauze that produces different images on each face simultaneously.
Risk level: Endangered · Within China's national ICH system; Miao embroidery on national ICH list; various regional forms separately listed
The hand making of round bamboo steamer baskets for Cantonese cooking, from splitting Luo bamboo into flat strips to weaving the base and lid.
The hand making of the Cantonese bridal costume known as the kwan kwa, a two-piece red silk or satin outfit of jacket and skirt embroidered entirely by hand in gold and silver thread with auspicious motifs such as dragons, phoenixes,…
The hand painting of white porcelain with overglaze enamels and gold, fired a second time at low temperature in a kiln.
The hand making of decorative fasteners for the traditional Chinese long gown (cheongsam or qipao).
The shaping of hot sugar syrup into animals, mythical beasts and blown forms by pulling, pinching, cutting with scissors and blowing air through a straw into a sugar ball.
Printing from cast lead-alloy Chinese type: the compositor picks individual characters from type cases, sets them on a rack, locks the forme and prints on a hand-fed or automatic platen press.
Hmong story cloth (Paj Ntaub Dab Neeg — 'flower cloth of stories') is a textile form that emerged among Hmong refugee communities in the late 1970s as a way of documenting the displacement, war, and migration experiences of the Hmong…
Cross-stitch embroidery applied to garments, most traditionally the thob worn by Palestinian women, with roots documented in Canaanite and Phoenician textile work dating back approximately 3,000 years.
Kyō-Nui (京繍 — Kyoto embroidery) is the court embroidery tradition of Kyoto — producing the embroidered elements of Noh costume, Buddhist vestments, and formal kimono accessories in silk and gold thread on silk ground cloth.
The Lefkada island needle lace tradition — the specific Greek needle lace from Lefkada (Lefkas) island in the Ionian Sea, whose distinctive white-on-white fine needle lace vocabulary is considered among the most refined in the…
Hmong batik and appliqué (Paj Ntaub Kab Ke — 'flower cloth in layers') is the primary textile art of the Hmong (Miao) people of northern Laos — combining wax-resist batik, reverse appliqué, and embroidery in a single garment panel.
The stringing of small glass beads into geometrically patterned, color- and shape-coded ornaments by Zulu women of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, constituting a formally documented visual-communication system in its own right, sometimes…