United States · Woodcraft / Inlay Decoration
El oro de los pobres ("the gold of the poor")
A technique of gluing individually split, flattened, and shaped pieces of straw onto a darkened wooden surface (typically crosses and retablos) to produce delicate geometric and figurative designs that visually emulate gold leaf, brought to colonial New Mexico by Spanish settlers as an economical alternative to true gold decoration and revived from near-total loss in 1936 by a single artist couple whose direct teaching lineage sustains nearly all contemporary practice.
Risk level: Extinct — Revival Exists · Not Applicable — the United States is not a State Party to the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage; no US technique can be formally ICH-inscribed regardless of significance.
A distinctive rattan and cane basketry tradition woven over a wooden mold with a solid turned wood base, developed by bored crewmen stationed for weeks at a time aboard the Nantucket Shoals lightship from the mid-19th century, later…
The hand-hammering (repoussé) of sheet copper into hollow, three-dimensional wind-direction ornaments — roosters, running horses, ships, and other figures — for barns, churches, and civic buildings, a colonial New England tradition dating…
A fine twined basketry and matting tradition using split spruce root and pounded cedar bark, producing tightly woven baskets, hats, mats, and clothing elements historically watertight enough to hold liquids, decorated with false-embroidery…
The United States side of the cross-border Coast Salish weaving tradition (see CRAFT-1712 for the Canadian/British Columbia side), practiced by Coast Salish nations around Puget Sound and the wider Salish Sea in Washington State, using the…
Densely beaded horse regalia — masks, martingales (chest ornaments), and saddle blankets — reflecting the central historical importance of the horse in Crow and Cheyenne social and ceremonial life, among the largest-scale beadwork objects…
The construction of feathered dance bustles and associated regalia worn in Southern Plains ceremonial and powwow dance, combining regulated eagle-feather handling under federal permit law with beadwork, hide, and dyed-feather decorative…
The Zakopane-Podhale woodcarving tradition — the specific decorative carving vocabulary of the Polish Tatra Highland region (Podhale), whose distinctive geometric and folk-figurative motifs were codified by Stanisław Witkiewicz in the late…
The Salzburg woodcarving tradition — the making of the distinctive Alpine religious woodcarvings (Krippen nativity scenes, Herrgott figures, devotional reliefs) of the Salzburg region, whose specific combination of limewood carving and…
The woodcarving tradition of the Ladin communities of the Dolomites — concentrated in Val Gardena (already covered in this archive as part of Trentino) but extending to the Ladin valleys of Badia, Fassa, and Livinallongo — with a distinct…
The Tyrolean painted furniture tradition — the making and painting of the distinctive Alpine folk furniture (Bauernmöbel) of the Tyrol, whose characteristic dark green, red, and blue painted panels with floral and religious motifs on a…
The making of figures (pastori) for the Neapolitan nativity scene — a tradition of extraordinary elaboration involving hand-modeled terracotta or wire-armature figures with fabric costumes, glass eyes, and real hair, depicting not only the…
The carving of wood blocks into simple, bold black-on-white relief images and their hand-printing as covers for literatura de cordel — small, hand-printed chapbooks of narrative poetry sold hanging from strings at markets and fairs across…