Bordado aplicado
A hand-spun cotton embroidery tradition of the Totonac people of Papantla, Veracruz, applying dense floral and figurative surface embroidery to huipiles and everyday and ritual clothing, sustained today through a dedicated Indigenous arts center built specifically to keep the technique, and the Totonac language it is taught in, alive for the next generation.
Risk level: Endangered · 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. Note: a related Totonac cultural practice, the Danza de los Voladores (Ritual Ceremony of the Flying Men), was itself inscribed by UNESCO in 2009, though that inscription covers the ceremonial dance rather than this record's textile embroidery technique.
The construction of suspended woven sleeping nets on a simple standing loom using a tight double or triple knotted weave, historically made from henequen (sisal) agave fiber and now most often cotton or nylon, centered on the town of…
A counted-thread cross-stitch embroidery tradition decorating the hipil, Yucatán's distinct pre-Hispanic-lineage traditional dress, combining a Spanish-introduced cross-stitch technique with at least one embroidery stitch — the xmanikté,…
A pre-Hispanic Purépecha copper-hammering tradition in which red-hot copper is shaped entirely by hand with hammers and anvils into vessels and decorative pieces bearing fret, rhombus, floral, and zoomorphic motifs, nearly extinguished by…
A nearly 500-year-old woodworking tradition in a Purépecha pine-forest town assigned to stringed-instrument making by Michoacán's first bishop, Vasco de Quiroga, in the 16th century, sustaining a town where an estimated 90 percent of the…
A pre-Hispanic Guerrero lacquer tradition centered on the rayado ("scratched" or incised) technique, in which a design is carved through a top layer of colored lacquer to reveal a contrasting layer beneath, then further embellished with…
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…
Singapore's Peranakan beadwork and kebaya making tradition is the last surviving urban instance of a craft that was once practiced across the Straits Settlements.
Joseon-era (1392-1897) Korean embroidered pillows worked with sipjangsaeng, the "ten symbols of longevity" -- a grouping of sun, clouds, mountains, water, pine trees, turtles, deer, cranes, peaches, and the herb of eternal youth that at…
Kasut Manek are the hand-beaded slippers of the Baba-Nyonya (Peranakan Chinese) communities of Penang, Melaka, and the Straits Settlements — produced by stitching thousands of tiny glass seed beads onto a canvas base in intricate floral…
The Bobowa bobbin lace tradition of Lesser Poland — one of two major Polish bobbin lace traditions (the other being Koniakow needle lace CRAFT-1372), using multiple bobbins to create the characteristic delicate white lace motifs of the…
The Bucks Point bobbin lace tradition of Buckinghamshire — one of England's most refined bobbin lace traditions, using a specific point ground (réseau) that resembles the Mechelen ground of Belgian/Rhineland lace (CRAFT-1211) but executed…
The Kashubian embroidery tradition of the Pomeranian lake district — the distinctive blue, yellow, red, and black folk embroidery of the Kashubian people, whose characteristic floral vocabulary (tulips, roses, forget-me-nots) is executed…