Unveiling and activating the "uncertain heritage" of Chinese Knotting

In the cultural heritage determination processes, something identified and designated as a heritage and important to preserve usually based on the society, the related people, and the natural environment, which guided the documentation and conservation measures. However, in this new industrial society, some of the heritage with hidden and forgotten values seems uncertain to be defined as heritage nor to be guided innovation development. Such as Chinese knotting, even if the craft acknowledges, it has no national definition as a heritage and faces an urgent situation to transform the traditional skill into new terms of practice. Base on this context, design looks promising to lower the craft’s uncertainty through unveiling the potential values and activating the craft with the stakeholders. Thus, the paper using the case of Chinese knotting to discuss what are the parameters to describe traditional craftsmanship’s heritage value in design research, what makes it uncertain, and how design has the potential unveiling and activating the traditional crafts' knowledge and skills.