Türkiye · Paper craft; Decorative arts; Ottoman heritage
Türk Ebrusu — Su Mermeri Sanatı
The Turkish ebru water marbling tradition — the creation of marbled patterns on paper or other surfaces by floating natural pigments on a gum tragacanth size and manipulating them before transfer to paper, whose specific combination of ox gall and natural mineral pigments produces the characteristic Turkish marbled paper that is both the oldest and most technically refined water marbling tradition in the world. The Turkish ebrucusu reads the correct size (kitre) viscosity through a drip-and-spread assessment — dropping a single drop of prepared kitre onto the surface and reading the specific spread diameter that indicates the correct gum tragacanth concentration.
Risk level: Stable · UNESCO ICH 2014 — Turkish traditional art of ebru; the most prestigious Turkish craft inscription in the CRAFT archive
The bath attendant’s hands-on technique in the Turkish hammam: after the bather sweats on the heated marble platform (göbek taşı), the attendant rinses them from a bowl, scrubs with a coarse kese mitt until dead skin rolls away, then soaps…
The illumination of manuscripts, calligraphic panels and documents with gold and color.
The Turkish Karagöz shadow puppet theater tradition — the Ottoman source tradition from which the Greek Karagiozis (CRAFT-1554) was adapted; the making of the flat jointed leather tasvir (figures) and the hayalci performance tradition that…
The Turkish hat sanatı (calligraphy art) tradition — the Ottoman Islamic calligraphy tradition using the specific reed pen (kamış kalem) cut to the hattat's personal specifications, writing in the six classical scripts (sülüs, nesih,…
The Gaziantep coppersmithing tradition — the production of the distinctive Southern Turkish hammered copper objects (trays, pots, ewers, and decorative objects) in the historic bakır çarşısı (copper market) of Gaziantep, whose specific…
The Bursa silk weaving tradition — the production of the imperial Ottoman luxury textiles (kemha, seraser, çatma) in the Ottoman silk capital of Bursa, whose specific combination of silk, gold thread, and complex compound weave structures…
Tibetan woodblock printing of texts by a two-person hand method: one person inks the carved block, the other applies the paper and rubs.
Handmade paper produced from the inner bark of the paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera — saa tree) using a fixed-frame floating sheet formation technique.
A relief printmaking technique in which an Inuit printmaker carves away the surface of a flattened stone block to leave a raised design translated from an artist's original drawing, then inks and hand-prints the design onto paper,…
The production of papyrus sheets from the pith of the Cyperus papyrus sedge, a technique invented in Egypt around 3000 BCE and used essentially unchanged for roughly 4,000 years until the eleventh century CE, producing the world's first…
A ritual art of Mathura and Vrindavan in which scenes from the life of Krishna are cut by hand with scissors into paper stencils and then made as temporary floor patterns with colored powders, or, in the jal sanjhi form, with colors…
A contemporary practice of Arabic calligraphy that moves from the manuscript, the building and the hand-lettered sign into painting: words rendered in many colors against a white ground, blending calligraphy and painting into one form.