In many cultures certain crafts are considered the province of women. Very young girls learn by mimicking their mothers' craft-making techniques; often, they are proficient before they are ten years old.

Although a "women's craft" in one culture may be a "men's craft" in another (gender assignments are almost always as inexplicable as they are inviolable), all the crafts in this book are considered in their societies to be women's crafts.

Read about crafts listed in the book below.

 
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Peru - shipibo pottery

Peru - Shipibo Pottery
Women in the Indigenous Shipibo ethnic group, who live in the Pucallpa area of Peru's Amazon Basin, are known for their pottery, which is covered with webs of geometric lines. The pots are made by kneading tree ash into lake or river mud, coiling the clay into shape, scraping the surface smooth with pumpkin rind, painting and glazing, firing the pots on open bonfires, and burnishing the surface with smooth stones.

   
Bolivia Knitted Dolls

Bolivia - Knitted Dolls
Quechua women in Bolivia used to knit neutral-colored doll-shaped purses, which they wore dangling from their belts. In 1968, a Peace Corps volunteer encouraged them to substitute bright yarn colors and market the doll purses. A female doll, whose dress is a money pouch, is always paired with a male doll; every doll couple is unique in pattern and color.

   
Poland - Floral Painting\

Poland - Floral Painting
In southeastern Poland, floral painting began in the 1800's when village women brightened the sooty walls of their two-room cottages with white lime dots that ultimately evolved into flowers. Today, the women decorate their houses inside and out with floral designs. For the past fifty years, local flower artists have competed in annual, juried competitions. In 1977, they opened the House of Painters in Zalipie where the artists work and sell vases, bells and other blossom-bedecked ceramic gifts.

   
Guatemala - Cuyuscate Weaving

Guatemala - Cuyuscate Weaving
Cuyuscate, colored cotton that is native to Guatemala, grows in tones of grey, pale green, and brown. It was used by ancient Mayan weavers but has not been grown commercially until now. In an effort to revitalize the weaving and embroidery markets, the Ixchel Museum in Guatemala City selected the most talented craftswomen in the country's highlands to use cuyuscate thread to create pillow covers, placemats, bookmarks and other home accessories.

   
Peru - Arpilleras

Peru - Arpilleras
Many Peruvian women who live in the squatter communities that surround Lima, learned to make arpilleras, three-dimensional appliquéd scenes, from an art teacher who brought the craft from Chile where it originated. Although arpilleras are made of fine-weave cotton, the word itself means "hopsacking" or "burlap." When peasant refugees from Peru's recent Shining Path violence sought sanctuary in Lima, the women began creating for sale, arpilleras showing the country villages they left behind.

   
Czech Republic - Kraslice

Czech Republic - Kraslice
Vnorovy, a town in the Czech Republic, is unique in the world: for the past hundred years, at least one woman in every house has created kraslice, hand-painted Easter Eggs. These women pioneered the batik technique for coloring eggs, using beeswax as the resist. Their signature designs - white, yellow, red and black geometric and floral patterns - are each as unique as snowflakes.

   
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Guatemala - Backstrap Weaving
In the Chimaltenango area of Guatemala, 450 widows of the thirty-six year civil war that ended in 1996 still support their families. They weave traditional local patterns into tablecloths, placemats and napkins, using subtle-hued, colorfast yarns selected to appeal to a sophisticated consumer market. Mayans believe the Goddess Ixchel created weaving; illustrated native manuscripts show her using the same backstrap loom the weavers use today: its continuous warp anchored by bars at each end, with one attached to a belt that encircles her waist; the other, attached to a wall or tree.

   
Ndebele Beadwork - South Africa

South Africa - Ndebele Beadwork
During the Boer war in the late nineteenth century, South African Ndebele women in the Eastern Transvaal reacted against efforts to decimate the group's distinctive character by resurrecting the beadwork that their foremothers began creating three hundred years earlier. Beadwork is now central to Ndebele personal, cultural and political identity as well as history, rituals - and commerce. Today, the Ndebele bead women of Waterval make and market dolls, trivets, mats and jewelry.

   
Zulu Baskets - South AFrica

South Africa - Zulu Baskets & Mats
Forty-five botanical species of reeds, rushes, palms and grasses grow in KwaZulu near Durban, South Africa. This proliferation provides easily available raw materials for products that range from museum-quality beer baskets (isichumo) woven from Ilala palm - to simple mats made to sit on (isicephu) or sleep on (icansi) woven from Ncema grass.

   
Turkey - Dobag Rugs

Turkey - DOBAG Rugs
When synthetic dyes caused the beautiful rugs created on the Aegean side of Turkey to run and fade, the market deteriorated dramatically. In 1981, The University of Marmara began DOBAG, a natural dye project that retrained weavers to use madder root, onionskin, oak galls and chamomile dyes to create harmonious, stable colors. Today, the cooperative includes four hundred families in nineteen villages; the quality of all rugs produced by member weavers is guaranteed for 200 years.

   
zimbabwe - Weya Art

Zimbabwe - Weya Art
In the mid-1980's, Shona women from Weya, a commercial area in eastern Zimbabwe, learned from Ilse Noy, a German art teacher, to create pictures of their villages, lives and myths. Their work, rendered in oil paint, appliqué and batik (for which readily affordable cornmeal porridge is the resist), has been shown at the National Gallery in the country's capital.

   
Indonesia - Floral Offerings

Indonesia - Floral Offerings
Every day on the Hindu island of Bali, Indonesia, women put offerings in high places to petition the heavenly gods and in low places to placate the demons. Materials for offerings come from the earth (flowers, leaves, fruit, grain, fowl) and are transformed by cooking, cutting, mixing and assembling, which every Balinese woman used to do at home. Today, women with jobs have little time to make canang (daily offerings), so they buy them in the market from one of the Brahmin, priest caste, women whose spirit suffuses the offerings and becomes part of the gift to the gods.

   
Thailand - Batiked Mulberry-Paper Gifts

Thailand - Batiked Mulberry-Paper Gifts
Northern Thailand used to be the center of handmade papermaking. Now that skill has been revived and Women Against AIDS has taught AIDS patients, sex workers, and village women to create gift boxes, cards, folders and picture frames, all covered with batik-patterned, handmade sa (mulberry) paper.

   
Thailand - Hill Tribe Needlework

Thailand - Hill Tribe Needlework
Lisu and the Hmong women in the rural Chiang Mai area of northern Thailand are experts at the embroidery and appliqué used to make placemats, purses, book covers and household accessories. Some women learned these skills in their native countries, China and Laos, but others just mastered them. King Bhumibal Adulyadej's appliqué and silversmith skill classes help northern farm families replace opium revenue (growing has been outlawed) and Queen Sirikit's SUPPORT program helps others supplement the income from crops that are harvested only annually.

   
Panama - Molas

Panama - Molas
Molas - intricate, layered, appliquéd pictures showing contemporary life, recent history and popular culture - form the front and back panels of the blouses that Kuna Indian women wear in the San Blas Archipelago off the east coast of Panama. Molas begin with reverse appliqué technique: stacked fabrics are slashed and colors in the lower layers are pulled to the surface; after they are sewn in place, more colors are stitched on top using traditional appliqué techniques. Kunas credit their ancestress, Kicadiray, with creating their women's colorful clothing, including Molas. Molas are sold as pillow covers, place mats and framed art.

   
Guatemala - Cuyuscate Weaving

Guatemala - Cuyuscate Weaving
Cuyuscate, colored cotton that is native to Guatemala, grows in tones of grey, pale green, and brown. It was used by ancient Mayan weavers but has not been grown commercially until now. In an effort to revitalize the weaving and embroidery markets, the Ixchel Museum in Guatemala City selected the most talented craftswomen in the country's highlands to use cuyuscate thread to create pillow covers, placemats, bookmarks and other home accessories.

   
Indonesia - Royal Batik

Indonesia - Royal Batik
In the nineteenth century, only women at the seven royal courts in Central Java created the intricate, ceremonial tulis, (hand-drawn), batik patterns that sometimes required twenty-seven immersions in natural dyes. When the monarchies were dismantled in 1922, the Kings' descendants began to sell their work. Now many of these talented courtesans have died, but some have launched The Pioneers, a foundation to teach, and hence perpetuate, the endangered classic art of royal batik.

   
India - Mirror Embroidery

India - Mirror Embroidery
Gujarat, India is one of the richest sources of folk embroidery in the world. Mothers begin when their daughters are born to create mirror embroidery for dowries that will include glittery wedding clothes for the bride and groom, household lines, and camel finery. The Self Employed Women's Association, a unique women's trade union, works with the Jat, Sodha, Ahir and Rabari tribes in the Kachchh district and markets their mirror embroidered fashion and home accessories.

   
Turkey - Soganli Dolls

Turkey - Soganli Dolls
The women make all the money in Soganli, Turkey, where fifty women in fifty houses create dolls dressed in bright, silky costumes accented with sequins - much like the clothes they wear themselves. The doll industry began in the 1960's when Hanife Ablak made a doll for her daughter, Dondu, to take to school for "show and tell." The women's doll market, which fills the town plaza, is a convenient stop for tourists visiting Cappadocia.

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