Russia · Painting & Decorative Arts
Мстёрская и Холуйская лаковая миниатюра
Two related but visually and historically distinct lacquer-miniature painting traditions, both descended, like Palekh (CRAFT-1871), from icon-painting centers whose masters turned to secular papier-mâché box painting after the 1917 Revolution ended demand for religious icons — Mstyora developing a documented preference for blue-silver or yellow-red palettes, solid (rarely black) backgrounds, and small, squat figures against landscapes with characteristic distant blue dales, while neighboring Kholuy took a full decade longer to organize its own artists' association and was not recognized as having developed a genuinely distinct artistic identity, separate from Palekh and Mstyora, until a dedicated 1959 exhibition marking its 25th anniversary.
Risk level: Endangered · Not Listed
The metalworking and jewelry-making tradition of the Buryat people, an Indigenous Mongol ethnic group of the Lake Baikal and Transbaikal regions of Siberia, in which blacksmith-jewelers historically combined minting (chased or stamped…
The processing of reindeer hide into clothing, footwear, and dwelling coverings by the Nenets, an Indigenous nomadic reindeer-herding people of the Yamal Peninsula and Russian Arctic, whose home for more than a thousand years is now…
The carving of mammoth ivory by the Sakha people of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Siberia — a material naturally preserved in the region's permafrost for thousands of years, yet one the Sakha did not begin carving until relatively…
A lapidary veneering technique developed at the Imperial Lapidary Works of Yekaterinburg, in which malachite — a soft, difficult stone found in the Ural Mountains in uniquely large, richly banded deposits — is sliced into veneer as thin as…
The engraved, openwork, and relief carving of walrus ivory, seal bone, and, more rarely, mammoth and elephant ivory, developed in the 17th century in Kholmogory, a White Sea port town near Arkhangelsk in Russia's far north — a tradition…
The engraving, chasing, and niello decoration of silver in the mountain village of Kubachi, Dagestan, mentioned in historical annals since the 4th century, where roughly 300 of the village's approximately 2,500 residents work as…
Ottchil is the Korean natural lacquer tradition — the application of sap from the lacquer tree (Rhus verniciflua) to wood, fabric, metal, or ceramic surfaces through multiple coats of progressive refinement to produce the characteristic…
Kiso Shikki (木曽漆器) is the lacquerware tradition of the Kiso Valley in Nagano Prefecture, built on the region's abundant local Japanese cypress (hinoki) timber and established at the start of the 17th century under the patronage of the…
The harvesting of leaf-bud resin from the mopa mopa tree (Elaeagia pastoensis Mora), and its transformation — by boiling, hand-and-teeth chewing, dyeing, and stretching into paper-thin colored sheets, often layered with silver leaf — into…
Light, strong everyday objects made by layering washi over a base of paper, bamboo or wood and coating them with persimmon tannin (kakishibu) or urushi lacquer.
Maki-e (蒔絵 — 'sprinkled picture') is Japan's supreme lacquer decoration technique — applying designs by painting with urushi on a lacquer surface and sprinkling gold or silver powder while the urushi is still wet, then sealing and…
Wajima-nuri, the lacquerware of Wajima on the Noto Peninsula, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan.