Uruguay · Wheel-thrown and tile-based glaze-research ceramics
Cerámica de Alta Temperatura Libre de Tóxicos
Utilitarian high-temperature ceramics and mosaic-style wall tiles made without highly toxic raw materials, so that durable pieces can be used without risk to health ('no incorporo materias primas altamente tóxicas'). Clay bodies and glazes are developed through chemistry applied to ceramics and tested in rows of labeled fired test bars before going into production. The documented practitioner, Hatsue 'Peco' Motosugi (working as Chirimbolía), sees utilitarian form as inherited from 'una cultura milenaria' (a millennia-old culture) whose material sets limits on maker and user, within which she pursues originality rather than reproduction.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not Applicable — no UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage inscription exists for this craft at time of writing
Figurative wood carving in an angular, geometric style: human and animal figures built from faceted planes rather than rounded modeling, in active poses drawn from everyday scenes (a photographer, a dog walker, fishermen on a bench, a…
Small figurative sculpture built by hand in clay and left deliberately raw and unglazed: rough surfaces, exposed internal wire or metal armatures, and weathered, fragmentary or incomplete human bodies, with the clay's coarse materiality…
Handmade lamps lit from within, built from wooden frameworks with paper or fabric panels: geometric cubes, organic curved forms of wire and fabric, and freestanding sculptural floor lamps.
Forging knife blades in Damascus steel (acero damasco) by pattern-welding layered steels to produce the characteristic rippled, wood-grain surface, then fitting handles of stingray leather (galuchat), bone or fine hardwood, with leather…
Handmade objects combining turned and carved wood, leather and ceramic (turned bowls, carved kitchen utensils, leather-clad utensil holders, studded leather mate carriers and thermos holders, bags and belts) made from native raw materials…
Kitchen utensils (turned bowls, hand-carved spatulas and spoons) made mainly from reclaimed wood of varied origins rather than uniform, purpose-sourced stock, aiming at objects that are functional and 'simples, duraderos y estéticamente…
The hand- and wheel-forming of red and green clay into pottery, a tradition documented in the United Arab Emirates since the fifth millennium BCE, evidenced by archaeological finds at Julphar and Mleiha in Ras Al Khaimah among other sites,…
Danu pottery is the traditional earthenware tradition of the Danu people — a small Tibeto-Burman group on the Shan plateau near Pindaya, Southern Shan State.
The hand-forming of majmar, colorfully decorated clay incense burners produced in Dhofar, southern Oman, a craft historically linked specifically to women and distinct in style, decoration, and clay type from Oman's other regional pottery…
The most complex and intellectually ambitious form of Italian Renaissance maiolica — the istoriato style developed in Urbino by Francesco Xanto Avelli, Nicola da Urbino, and the Fontana bottega — in which the entire surface of a plate or…
A tradition of tin-glazed earthenware from Deruta (Umbria) characterized by its distinctive lustrous metallic finish — achieved through a third firing in a reduction atmosphere — as well as richly colored Renaissance-derived patterns…
The tin-glazed earthenware tradition from Faenza (Emilia-Romagna) — the city whose name gave faience to the world — characterized by its white tin glaze ground and Renaissance polychrome decoration, the berrettino (gray-blue ground)…