United States · Pottery / Ceramics
Redware
Red earthenware pottery decorated using two related techniques — sgraffito, in which a design is scratched through a white slip coating to reveal the red clay beneath, and slip-trailing, in which liquid slip is poured freehand through a quilled trailer directly onto the surface — practiced with remarkable stylistic consistency by Pennsylvania German potters for roughly 120 years without any formal school or shared training system.
Risk level: Vulnerable · 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.
Matte-on-glossy black pottery achieved through a smothered, oxygen-reduction outdoor firing, developed by Maria and Julian Martinez in the early 20th century after study of ancient black-on-black sherds and now a defining San Ildefonso…
A flat, blunt carved knife, traditionally made of ivory or wood, used almost exclusively by Yup'ik girls to draw figures and scenes in mud, snow, or sand while narrating traditional and improvised stories — a storytelling implement whose…
Extremely thin-walled, hand-coiled pottery made from clay tempered with ground potsherds, prized for fine geometric and fine-line painted designs and for walls thin enough that a small clay impurity can cause a firing failure.
A Zuni-originated lapidary tradition in which turquoise and other stones are cut into slender needle-shaped or channel-set pieces and arranged in dense, precise mosaic patterns within a silver framework, developed as a distinctive Zuni…
Small hand-carved stone animal figures, often finished with an inlaid 'heartline' running from mouth to heart and sometimes an offering bundle, carved to hold and channel the spirit of the depicted animal for protection, healing, or…
Carving of cottonwood-root figures representing katsina spirits, traditionally given to children as teaching objects and today also produced as fine-art collector pieces, with the range of appropriate subjects governed by religious…
Arayachi (荒焼, 'rough-fired ware') is the unglazed branch of Tsuboya ware, Okinawa's principal pottery tradition — the stoneware of storage: great water jars, awamori and miso jars, and many shisa guardian lions.
Quarrying and preparation of ghassoul, a saponaceous clay from the Tamdalet deposits near Ksabi in the Moulouya valley.
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…
A supplement record documenting the preparation of Schmaltblau — the specific Meissen cobalt underglaze formulation used for the Zwiebelmuster and other Meissen blue painting traditions (CRAFT-1170).
Khmu hand-built pottery (ດິນຂະມຸ din khmu) is the oldest ceramic tradition in Laos — predating Lao Loum settlement of the Mekong Valley — and one of the most technically minimal: pots are formed entirely by coiling and hand-smoothing, with…
Goryeo celadon (cheongja) is the Korean ceramic tradition that produced, between the 10th and 14th centuries, some of the most technically and aesthetically remarkable ceramics in world history — praised by Chinese Song Dynasty observers…