Solomon Islands · Basketry / Mat Weaving / Fiber Craft
Various island-specific terms
The weaving of baskets, mats, and fans from pandanus leaves and vine fibers, documented as overwhelmingly women's work and women's knowledge across the Solomon Islands, taught mother and grandmother to daughter over years of sustained practice. This record closes a gap distinct from the archive's existing two Solomon Islands records (Langalanga Shell Money Making, CRAFT-0667, and Nguzunguzu Canoe Prow Carving, CRAFT-0668): both existing records document specialist crafts historically associated with male practitioners and prestige or currency objects, while this record documents the parallel, equally significant fiber-craft tradition specifically transmitted through women's family lines, producing everyday functional objects that simultaneously carry genuine artistic and identity significance. Patterns are frequently passed down within specific families and can carry meaning particular to a given island or clan, meaning a finished basket or mat is not merely a functional object but a legible marker of its maker's specific community identity — a documented craft characteristic sharing structural similarity with the archive's existing shell-money and canoe-carving records' own community-specific design conventions, despite the fundamentally different material, gender-transmission pattern, and object category involved.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not Listed
The Langalanga people of the lagoon off the western coast of Malaita Island (Solomon Islands) produce the shell money (rokosama) that is still used as currency for bride price, compensation, and ceremony throughout Malaita.
The carving of ceremonial bowls, batons, statues, and figures from dark hardwood, embellished with intricate inlaid patterns of iridescent nautilus shell set into carved recesses — a technique the Metropolitan Museum of Art identifies as…
The nguzunguzu is the carved figural ornament fixed to the prow of Solomon Islands war canoes — a small (15-25cm) figure representing a sea spirit (vura) who guides the canoe through dangerous waters.
Magimagi is the Fijian braided coconut fiber cord that binds the structural elements of traditional Fijian bure (thatched house) and the lashings of traditional drua canoes.
A net-weave (malla de red) textile technique of the Weenhayek people of Bolivia's Gran Chaco, in which women hand-spin thread from the caraguatá plant and freehand-weave it, without ruler or fixed pattern, into llica net bags and other…
The pit-loom weaving of striped cotton cloth by male weavers of Mogadishu and the adjacent Benaadir coastal region of southern Somalia, a textile tradition documented continuously from at least the early 14th century to the present.
A family-based palm hat weaving and shaping craft of K'iche' Maya communities in which braiding and design work, hat shaping and tailoring, and the business itself are shared across parents, spouses, children, and multiple generations…
The Kiribati pandanus weaving tradition (te bwai ni katei — the thing of the culture) — the production of the distinctive I-Kiribati woven pandanus mats and baskets whose specific plaiting technique and the atoll pandanus leaf quality…
The Mongolian urga (уурга) — the catching lasso pole — and the nogto (ногт) — the halter and bridle rope — are made from braided horse tail hair, the strongest and most water-resistant natural fiber available to steppe nomads.