Mexico · Musical Instrument Making (Lutherie)
Guitarrería de Paracho
A nearly 500-year-old woodworking tradition in a Purépecha pine-forest town assigned to stringed-instrument making by Michoacán's first bishop, Vasco de Quiroga, in the 16th century, sustaining a town where an estimated 90 percent of the roughly 35,000 residents make guitars or guitar parts, producing everything from mass-market instruments to hand-carved concert-grade classical and flamenco guitars — including the guitar that inspired the design used in Pixar's film Coco.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not currently inscribed on a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list; Mexico is a State Party to the UNESCO 2003 Convention (ratified 14 December 2005) and could nominate this technique in the future.
A layered lacquer technique with origins entirely independent of and predating contact with Asian lacquerware, in which fat rendered from a scale insect (aje) is combined with plant oil and powdered dolomite or lime-rich earth to build a…
A more than 2,000-year-old Zapotec and Mixtec pottery tradition using a naturally dark clay mined near San Bartolo Coyotepec, Oaxaca, hand-built without a potter's wheel using a pre-Hispanic two-saucer turning method, transformed in the…
A wood-carving tradition specific to the small Lake Pátzcuaro-area village of Tocuaro, producing elaborately carved and painted ceremonial masks — devils, animals, and human figures — used in Purépecha ritual dance, with the village so…
A wool-weaving tradition on the Spanish-introduced two-pedal treadle loom, fusing colonial European technology with a Zapotec design language over 2,500 years old — geometric patterns drawn directly from the stone mosaics of the nearby…
A backstrap-loom weaving tradition of the Amuzgo people, straddling the Guerrero–Oaxaca border, producing what specialist textile researchers regard as among the finest backstrap-woven brocade cloth in Mexico, distinguished by a…
A backstrap-loom weaving tradition of the Tzotzil and Tzeltal Maya of highland Chiapas, using a supplementary-weft brocade technique to weave cosmological and botanical symbolism directly into cotton and wool huipiles (blouses), with each…
The carving of the ngombi, a sacred arched harp central to Bwiti religious practice among Gabon's Fang, Mitsogo, and related ethnic groups, carved from a single hollowed piece of lightweight wood -- traditionally cottonwood -- and covered…
The Jarai people of Ratanakiri Province maintain a bronze gong casting and tuning tradition closely related to the Vietnamese Central Highlands gong traditions (shared cultural heritage across the Cambodia-Vietnam border).
Thai classical musical instrument making encompasses the production of the instruments of the piphat and mahori ensembles — the primary classical orchestras of Thailand.
The construction of the kundi (or kende), a bow harp of the Zande people of the Central African Republic, and the closely related ngombi arched harp of the wider region, alongside the Ngbaka people's distinctive mbela musical bow.
The haegeum (two-stringed fiddle) and gayageum (12-stringed plucked zither) are the two most iconic Korean traditional instruments — and their making is a craft tradition of considerable technical precision.
The hollowing of sacred hardwood trunks and fitting of animal-hide heads to construct the large ceremonial drums central to Burundi's royal drumming tradition, ingoma, whose associated ritual dance was inscribed by UNESCO on the…