Chile · Concentric-circle horsehair and vegetable-fiber micro-weaving
Tejido en Crin
A technique unique in the world — the concentric weaving of dyed horsehair (crin) combined with a vegetable fiber called Ixtle into small, colorful decorative pieces (butterflies, flowers, bookmarks, and jewelry), practiced almost entirely by women in Rari, a small adobe-house village in the foothills of Chile's Maule region, near Linares. The craft's actual origin was not horsehair at all: beginning in the late 19th century, women near the Panimávida thermal springs wove baskets from the fine, cleaned, and peeled roots of riverside willow and poplar trees, selling their work to visitors traveling to the popular hot springs. In the 1930s, river pollution weakened these tree roots so severely that artisans could no longer use them — a documented environmental crisis that forced a complete material reinvention, and horsehair, cleaned and dyed, became the craft's new and now-signature material. Named contemporary artisan Pilar Vejar's work reached the 2022 Biennale of Contemporary Crafts in Paris (Salón Révélations) through the Lamps From Chile design collaboration, while Sara, founder of the Maestra Madre ('Mother Teacher') artisan collective established in 1998 specifically in response to a marked 1990s sales decline and fears the craft would disappear entirely, continues to lead the village's only formal artisan organization today.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not Applicable — no UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage inscription exists for this craft at time of writing
The weaving of the chamanto — a reversible, rectangular poncho-like garment with a central head-opening, fully finished on both sides with no raw edges, worn as the gala complement of the Chilean huaso (cowboy) — on a loom found nowhere…
The hand-modeling, needle-incising, and smoke-firing of black earthenware — pots, fountains, tableware, and figurines depicting the peasant landscape and its characters, above all the guitarrera (a countrywoman singer holding a guitar) —…
The weaving of baskets and brooms from quilineja (Luzuriaga radicans), a fine-rooted evergreen climbing vine native to Chile and Argentina, harvested by Chiloé artisans deep in the archipelago's forests, where they seek out the plant…
The hand-carving and lathe-turning of combarbalita, a multicolored ornamental kaolinite mineral found nowhere else on Earth, mined no more than ten meters below ground near the town of Combarbalá, Limarí Province, Coquimbo Region.
A brightly colored appliqué patchwork technique — fabric scraps cut from old clothing sewn onto a rectangle of burlap or sacking, roughly the size of a cafeteria tray, sometimes finished with three-dimensional embroidered or crocheted…
The braiding of local wheat straw into cuelchas (long plaited strands, giving the craft its practitioner name, colchandera) and their sewing into the chupalla, Chile's national huaso hat, in Ninhue and neighboring communes of the Itata…
The weaving, carving, and openwork cutting of beresta, the bark of the birch tree, one of Russia's oldest and most widespread natural craft materials — used since antiquity as a writing surface (the Slavs' oldest surviving written…
Hand-knotted pile carpets (zerbia) and short-nap flatweaves (mergoum, klim) woven by women in Kairouan, Tunisia's oldest and most renowned carpet center.
The coiled binding of thick local grass (njodax/ndiorokh) with thin strips of palm frond into vividly colored baskets by Wolof women of Senegal, a technique practiced for generations and transmitted from mother to daughter and aunt to…
The handloom weaving of narrow-strip cotton wrapper cloth by Tem craftsmen and craftswomen of Sokodé, Togo's second-largest city and the historic capital of the Tem people.
A lightweight woven carpet technique unique to Tunisia, positioned technically between a classic knotted pile carpet and a plain woven kilim, produced through a weft-substitution flatweave method inherited by Berber tribes of southern…
The hand-weaving of ceremonial loincloth cloth by men of the Manjak (also Mandjak, Manjaco, Njaago) ethnic group, whose communities span Guinea-Bissau (the group's homeland), Casamance in Senegal, Gambia, and Cape Verde.