Hojalata
The pounding, stamping, and punching of heavy-gauge tin into decorative and functional objects — nichos, mirror frames, crosses, candelabras — with San Miguel de Allende specifically credited as the technique's Mexican birthplace after a single migrant tinsmith settled there in 1910, and locally distinguished from other regional tinwork by a deliberate aging and oxidization process that produces a characteristic bronzed patina.
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.
The hand-mining of amber — fossilized tree resin roughly 23 to 27 million years old — from narrow, dangerous vertical shafts dug into the mountains around Simojovel, Chiapas, followed by hand-cutting, carving, and polishing into jewelry…
The carving of fantastical, brightly painted animal and hybrid-creature figures from freshly cut copal wood, a technique that adapted Mexico City artist Pedro Linares' 1930s papier-mâché dream-creature invention into a distinct Oaxacan…
A hand-painted tin-glazed earthenware (majolica) tradition brought to Puebla by Spanish potters before 1653, itself the product of a much older chain of cross-cultural transmission running from the Middle East through Moorish Spain and…
A leather-embroidery technique in which pita or ixtle — fine, strong thread hand-processed from agave (maguey) leaf fiber — is stitched directly into leather in dense decorative patterns, developed in Colotlán, Jalisco, from the late 19th…
A chisel-and-mallet paper-cutting technique developed in San Salvador Huixcolotla, Puebla, in which artisans stack up to fifty sheets of colored tissue paper and punch elaborate symmetrical designs through the entire stack at once,…
A wool wearing-blanket tradition developed when Spanish colonial authorities resettled Tlaxcalan weavers to Saltillo, Coahuila, in 1591, combining pre-Hispanic backstrap-loom textile knowledge with Spanish-introduced treadle looms and wool…
Southern Thailand was historically one of the world's most significant tin-producing regions — the Malay Peninsula's geology providing abundant cassiterite deposits that made Nakhon Si Thammarat, Phuket, and Phang-nga important centers in…
The Danish amber working tradition — the collection and working of Baltic amber (rav) washed onto the Danish west coast beaches of Jutland, which has been the primary Danish decorative material from the Stone Age through the Viking Age to…
Norigae is the traditional Korean decorative accessory — a pendant ornament worn hanging from the jeogori jacket tie of a Hanbok — combining a central ornamental element (jade, amber, coral, or silver), silk cord knotting (maedeup —…
The Styrian iron working tradition of the Erzberg — the making of forged iron objects from the ore of the Steirische Erzberg (Styrian Iron Mountain), the world's largest open-cast iron ore mine, which has supplied Styrian ironmasters for…
The Vienna silversmithing tradition — the production of the distinctive Habsburg Imperial silver whose quality was governed by the Wiener Punze (Vienna hallmark) from 1806, and whose characteristic restrained neo-classical and Biedermeier…
Jingtai lan (景泰藍 — 'Jingtai blue') is the Beijing court cloisonné tradition brought to Taiwan by mainland craftspeople in 1949 — now more actively practiced in Taiwan than in Beijing, where the Cultural Revolution severely disrupted the…