Tibet / China · Printmaking / Manuscript Craft
པར་ཆ (Parcha)
Tibetan woodblock printing of texts by a two-person hand method: one person inks the carved block, the other applies the paper and rubs. Its largest and most complete surviving center is the Derge Parkhang (དེ་དགེ་པར་ཁང) in Derge County, Sichuan Province, which holds over 320,000 woodblocks carved over three centuries and still prints by traditional hand methods. The defining technical knowledge is the ink application calibration — the printer's brush must apply a thin, perfectly even ink coat to the carved block surface in a specific number of brush passes (typically two to three passes in alternating directions) that the Derge masters describe as 'enough to see but not enough to pool.' 'See but not pool' is the quality standard.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · China National ICH List (2006); Derge Parkhang separately protected
The lhamo (ལྷ་མོ) is the specific clay vessel used in traditional Tibetan medicine (Sowa Rigpa) for preparing medicinal decoctions — the vessel form, clay composition, and firing method are all specified in Tibetan medical texts because…
Göku (གོས་སྐུ — 'cloth deity') is the Tibetan tradition of producing large-format Buddhist compositions in silk appliqué — cutting silk brocade and satin into figure shapes and assembling them on a fabric ground, rather than painting.
Sertog (གསེར་གཏོགས — 'gold-touching') is the Tibetan tradition of casting Buddhist deity figures in bronze using the lost-wax process and then fire-gilding the surface with mercury amalgam — the same amalgam gilding documented in Nepal's…
Gtor-ma (གཏོར་མ) are the geometric ritual dough forms placed on Tibetan Buddhist altars — distinct from the larger figurative butter sculptures (CRAFT-0615) in being smaller, more precisely geometric, and more directly tied to specific…
Tibetan pö sang (སྤོས་བསང) is the tradition of preparing the aromatic incense blends used in Buddhist ritual smoke offerings (sang), daily monastery burning, and traditional Tibetan medicine.
Tibetan khaden (ཁ་དེན) carpets are among the most technically distinctive in the world because of the rod pile technique — unique to Tibet among all carpet-weaving traditions.
Two textiles made from washi in Shiroishi, Miyagi Prefecture.
A writing and ceremonial material made by beating the inner bark of the paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) rather than by forming a sheet from pulp, which places it closer to tapa and barkcloth than to true paper.
Handmade paper formed from the pseudostems (the 'trunks') of banana plants that have already fruited, developed in Bali from 1998 for interiors rather than writing.
Wallpaper printed by hand from relief-carved wooden blocks, one block for each color and each part of the design, onto paper that has first been brushed with a solid ground color.
Dzo-sho (རྫོང་ཤོག — 'dzong paper') is Bhutan's traditional handmade paper — produced from the bark of Daphne species shrubs (Daphne bholua and Edgeworthia gardneri — locally called re in Dzongkha) using a technique structurally similar to…
The hand making of rag paper (paper de trapo) in the Catalan paper mill tradition — one of the oldest paper production traditions in western Europe, with Catalan paper mills documented from 1282 (the Xàtiva mill in Valencia being the first…