7 Ancient Malaysian Traditional Crafts at Risk
Imagine walking through a kampung (village) at dawn. Traditional crafts like wood shavings fall softly from a craftsman’s carving knife; distant laughter under multicoloured kites dancing in the breeze; silk and gold threads glint under lantern light as a weaver bends over their loom. These scenes once formed the heartbeat of Malaysia’s cultural identity. But today, many of those crafts are fading. Skills passed down generation to generation are being lost. As modern life marches forward, some of the traditional crafts that once defined communities are at serious risk of disappearing forever.
In this article, we explore seven ancient Malaysian crafts under threat—who practices them now, why they are vanishing, and what might be done to preserve them. We’ll focus especially on wood carving Malaysia, wau kite making, handicraft items more broadly, songket weaving, and other related traditions. By the end, you’ll understand both the richness of these crafts and the urgent need for action.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. What is songket in Malaysia?
Songket is a luxurious handwoven fabric traditionally made of silk or cotton interwoven with gold or silver threads. It is worn during weddings, royal ceremonies, and festivals, symbolizing wealth and heritage. Authentic songket weaving is slow and intricate, making each piece a unique work of art. Songket is also one of the most famous traditional craft of Malaysia.
2. What is the traditional crafts of Malaysia?
Malaysia’s traditional craft scene is diverse, covering wood carving, wau kite making, songket weaving, rattan basketry, beadwork, and keris metal forging. These crafts reflect the country’s multi-ethnic culture and are often linked to rituals, architecture, and daily village life.
3. What is the traditional weaving in Malaysia?
The most recognized traditional weaving is songket weaving, where artisans create complex patterns with supplementary gold or silver threads. Other weaving traditions include mengkuang and rattan weaving, which produce mats, baskets, and decorative handicraft items.
4. What is the purpose of wau kite in Malaysia?
5. What is the most popular handicraft in Malaysia?
What Makes a Traditional Crafts Vulnerable?
Before diving into specific examples, it helps to understand the common pressures:
- Aging artisans with few apprentices
- Economic pressures, including cheaper mass production
- Scarcity or overexploitation of natural raw materials
- Changing tastes in younger generations preferring modern materials or products
- Lack of institutional support, visibility, or markets
These pressures show up again and again in the seven crafts we’ll cover.
7. Traditional craft like Embroidery, Beadwork, and Signboard / Lantern / Shoemaker Traditions
This category covers smaller crafts that are highly detail-oriented, often tied to ritual, fashion, or local commerce:
- Embroidery styles such as kelingkan, the stitching details on traditional clothes.
- Beadwork (especially among indigenous communities), jewelry, belts, etc.
- Lantern makers, signboard engravers, shoe makers that use old methods. In places like George Town (Penang), the number of such artisans has dwindled.
6. Traditional craft such as Pottery and Ceramics (e.g. Sarawak, Indigenous Pottery)
In Sarawak, indigenous pottery (clay work, ceramic tradition) has roots back to ancient times, with relics found in Niah Caves. Contemporary potters like Nabilah Abdullah work to maintain traditional shapes, glazing, motifs.
Yet this craft faces:
- Fewer apprentices: clay work is labour-intensive, messy, time-consuming.
- Market competition: mass-produced ceramics, imports, or decorative tourist items sometimes favour novelty over authenticity.
- Raw resources and firing facilities may be limited or expensive.
5. Keris and Metal-Based Traditional Craft Objects
While much of this article focuses on fibre, wood, textile crafts, metal-based crafts like the keris (traditional Malay dagger) making, gold and silver smithing, and decorative metal work are also endangered. These require specialist knowledge (forging, engraving, inlay), and materials can be expensive. According to the survey of dying crafts in Malaysia, keris making and silversmithing are among those crafts with shrinking practitioners.
4. Other Handicraft Items (Rattan weaving, Bamboo crafts, Mengkuang weaving, etc.)
What Are These Handicraft Items?
Beyond songket or wood carving, Malaysia has rich traditions in basketry, mats, containers, furniture, blinds, decorative items made from natural fibres (rattan, bamboo, mengkuang, and pandan leaves). These handicraft items are often utilitarian (harvest baskets, blinds, boxes), decorative, or ritual.
Threats to Their Survival
- Loss of raw materials: Forest clearing, monocultures, commercial land use reduce availability of wild rattan, mengkuang and other fibre plants.
- Low income and competitiveness: These crafts are often poorly compensated; mass produced plastic or synthetic alternatives are cheaper. Low profit margin → artisans leave the craft.
- Cultural undervaluing: In urban centers especially, people may view handmade handicraft items as old-fashioned, impractical, or expensive. The younger generation may not value or demand them.
Specific Examples
- Mengkuang weaving: Used for mats, baskets, bags. Wild mengkuang patches are shrinking; some craftspeople have introduced small, cultivated patches for material, but capacity is limited.
- Rattan furniture and weaving: Where young people leave for other careers; traditional techniques may be lost.
- Handmade bamboo blinds and bamboo crafts: Once common, now rare due to synthetic or plastic alternatives.
3. Traditional Craft: Songket Weaving
What is Songket?
Songket is a luxurious handwoven fabric, often using silk or cotton as base, with gold or silver threads for patterns, traditionally worn during noble, royal or ceremonial events. The weaving technique (supplementary weft threads) is intricate. Designs include floral motifs, geometric patterns, symbolic elements. This tradition spans both Peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia.
Why It’s in Decline
- Time and labour intensive: A simple songket might take weeks; intricate motifs even months. Younger people often prefer jobs with steadier income and less tedious work.
- Competition from mechanised and imitation fabrics: Machine-made songket or printed imitations are cheaper and easier to produce. They erode appreciation for authentic craftsmanship.
- Fewer weavers, aging population: Organisations like Tanoti in Sarawak point out that older generation weavers are passing away, with fewer young apprentices
Current Preservation Efforts
- Tanoti (Sarawak): Established to support songket weaving communities, providing training, mentorship, housing.
- Malaysian Craft Council: Training programmes, e.g. in Kelantan, for songket weaving & related embroidery (kelingkan).
- Academic & heritage work: Studies (e.g. “A Preliminary Study on Songket: A Preservation of Intangible Cultural Heritage”, 2025) looking into techniques, materials, and legacy.
2. One of the famous Traditional Craft: Wau Kite Making
What is Wau?
“Wau” refers to intricately designed Malaysian kites, especially those from the east coast states like Kelantan and Terengganu. The most iconic is wau bulan (moon-kite), with its crescent shape and large size, colourful motifs, often floral patterns, decorated with cut-out paper overlays, etc. There are also wau burung (bird kite), wau kucing (cat kite), wau merak (peacock kite), and more.
Why It’s Fading
- Few artisans remain: The traditional craft of building wau requires time, patience, skill. Fewer young people are committing to learning the full process (frame building, decoration, balancing).
- Reduced demand and usage: Wau used to be flown widely, in festivals, competitions, but modern entertainment, other pastimes reduce interest. Some wau are now made only for display or tourism.
- Materials and tradition: Bamboo, natural papers, decorative motifs—some materials are harder to source; motifs may simplify. Also making large wau needs space.
Consequences
If wau kite making disappears, we lose not just an art form, but a living symbol: wau and its motifs (like wau bulan) are part of national identity (featured on coins, in MAS logo) and tied to community traditions.
1. Traditional Craft: Wood Carving Malaysia (especially Malay, Orang Asli, and Indigenous Styles)
What is Wood Carving in Malaysia?
Wood carving is one of Malaysia’s oldest art forms. Different ethnic groups—Malay, Orang Asli (including Jah Hut, Mah Meri), Iban, Bidayuh—each have their distinctive styles: motifs drawn from nature (e.g. awan larat), vines, leaves, birds, and spiritual symbols. Wood carving appears in architecture (doors, windows, panels), in ritual objects like masks, in furniture, in vessels. Wood carving Malaysia encompasses this whole tradition.
Why It’s at Risk
- Raw material scarcity: High-quality woods are getting harder to source. Forest conversion (to oil-palm estates, plantations, urban sprawl) reduces access to species like merbau and others.
- Economic and market pressures: Mass-produced, machine-cut wood panels are cheaper. Artisans have high cost for materials, but buyers are unwilling or unable to pay premium for handmade quality.
- Aging artisans & lack of successors: Many master wood carvers are older; fewer young people are entering the field. The knowledge of tools, carving techniques, spiritual meaning is not being passed on as widely.
Example: Jah Hut & Mah Meri Wood Carving
- The Jah Hut people continue traditional craft of wood carving not just as art or income but as spiritual practice—carving masks (topeng), sculptures tied to belief in unseen spirits. Yet their tradition is threatened by loss of forest and isolation.
- The Mah Meri of Pulau Carey are well known, but even among them, with commercialization and tourist demand, some carvings become more decorative than meaningful. Authenticity, materials, motivation wane.
Underlying Issues of why Malaysian Traditional Crafts faced challenges
Pulling together from all these crafts, here are common underlying issues:
- Transmission of Knowledge
Master artisans are aging. Apprentices are few. Even when there are apprentices, often the transmission is informal, not well documented. - Raw Material Access
Forest loss, legal restrictions, market export of high-quality timber, overharvesting of rattan, etc. Many materials are slower to grow or create. - Economic Viability
Handmade crafts cost often more in time, labour, materials. Buyers often unwilling to pay premium. Craftspeople may struggle to make a living. - Cultural Shift & Modernisation
Younger people often prefer jobs with more steady pay, less physical labour; mass culture replaces local tradition; global influences change tastes. - Lack of Institutional Support
While there are organisations and programmes, many crafts don’t receive enough recognition, funding, or official policy support. Some crafts are not well integrated into tourism, education, or media.
What’s Being Done to Preserve Them
Despite the grim outlook, there are promising efforts:
- Organisations like Tanoti (in Sarawak) that bring together artisans, provide mentorship, workspace, and try to make the craft economically viable.
- Malaysian Craft Council programmes to recruit and train young talent in traditional weaving arts (songket, embroidery) in Kelantan etc.
- Academic research & documentation, e.g. studies into songket weaving as intangible cultural heritage.
- Policy and visibility, such as exhibitions, heritage tourist trails, awards (e.g. Gold Threads Awards), museums, craft centres.
- Efforts to connect artisans directly to markets, via social media, apps, craft tourism, to increase income share for craftspeople.
Explore What Each of Us Can Do to Contribute Malaysian Traditional Crafts
Preserving these crafts is not only a matter for governments or organisations. Individuals can help in small but meaningful ways:
- Buy authentic crafts: when purchasing handicraft items, seek out those made by master artisans using traditional techniques and natural materials.
- Learn and pass on: take workshops, encourage younger people in your family to learn. Even small embroidery, weaving, or carving classes help.
- Support institutions: museums, craft workshops, exhibitions that showcase endangered crafts deserve attention and patronage.
- Raise awareness: writing, photographing, sharing on social media, documenting stories of artisans.
- Advocate for policy: support cultural heritage laws, funding for craft education, protection of raw materials (forests, plant species).
Case Study: Wood Carving & Songket Weaving in Kelantan
Because of the strong presence of both wood carving Malaysia and songket weaving in Kelantan, this state offers a microcosm of both the risks and the solutions.
- Kelantan Traditional Craft like Wood Carving: areas like Desa Ukiran Kayu and in the Terengganu-Kelantan border are known for workshops producing carved panels, doors, etc. Studies show the authenticity, motifs, skills are at risk if young people do not take up apprenticeship.
- Songket in Kelantan: weavers are being trained via government and NGO supported courses; the Malaysian Craft Council’s “Textile Project” is training students in kelingkan embroidery, songket weaving. Graduates can produce shawls that fetch up to RM3,000, showing potential for economic sustainability.
Lessons from this include that pairing cultural value with economic viability, plus institutional support and market access, gives the best chance for survival.
Summary Table
Here’s a quick reference summary of the 7 crafts, what is threatening them, and what preservation looks like:
Craft | Threats | Preservation Actions |
Wood Carving Malaysia | Loss of wood, aging masters, economic unattractiveness | Workshops, heritage villages, market incentives |
Wau Kite Making | Declining artisans, fewer festivals, material cost | Festivals, kite-making workshops, cultural branding |
Songket Weaving | Imitations, labour/time intensity, fewer weavers | Organisations like Tanoti, training courses, fair pricing |
Handicraft Items (rattan, mengkuang etc.) | Raw materials loss, mass substitutes, low profit | Cultivation, promotion, integrating with tourism |
Keris & Metal crafts | Specialist skills, expensive materials, regulatory issues | Mentorship, cultural heritage status, patronage |
Traditional Pottery / Ceramics | Raw clay/firing tech, market pressures | Education, museum exhibits, artisan studios |
Embroidery / Beadwork / Signboard etc. | Low demand, undervaluation, lack of appeal | Exhibits, apprenticeship, design collaborations |
Conclusion
Malaysia is rich in traditional craft item and culture. From the delicate threads of songket to the bold carvings in wood, from the whimsical beauty of wau kite making to the ritual steel of the keris—these traditional crafts are more than objects. They are living stories, expressions of identity, memory and art.
But many are very close to vanishing forever. Unless action is taken—by individuals, communities, institutions, and the government—loss of expertise, raw materials, and interest could lead to certain crafts becoming memories only in books.
Call to action: Support local artisans. Buy authentic handicraft items. Participate in workshops. Encourage younger people to carry on the work. Advocate for policies that protect artisans and raw materials. If you are in Malaysia, visit villages, museums, craft centres. And if you are not, help spread awareness—because once a craft is lost, it’s extremely difficult to bring back.
Let us not allow these 7 ancient crafts—wood carving Malaysia, wau kite making, songket weaving, and more—to disappear forever.
