Greg Bloom Hunts for elusive textiles and discovers that this centure old art form might be worth a punt
I am in a remote village teeming with chickens and children outside Bangued, capital of the remote Abra Province in north-west Luzon, haggling over the price of a piece of cloth.
“How much?”
“That one’s 2,000 pesos,” responds my host, Luis Agaid, respected head of the venerable Itneg family that has been living – and dyeing – in Barangay Namarabar for more than a century. The Agaids are probably the last remaining masters of the traditional Itneg art of natural dyeing.
“Well, I’m not really a collector – I’m really just here to write about your textiles, not buy them,” I insist.
MYSTERY TEXTILES
The object in question is an old lightning belt, worn long ago as a loincloth or sash. Sensing that my words belied a hint of interest, Agaid sweetens the deal, offering me a blue ceremonial kinamayan blanket, – a genuine family heirloom, for an extra 1,000 pesos.
A quick glance at my wallet reveals that I have only about 3,000 pesos left – not enough, in other words, for a ticket back to Manila on the night bus if I were to buy both pieces.
“Does that mean I can have either for 1,500?”
“Okay, okay”, Agaid responds. The quick response indicates that perhaps I could have done better, but there’s no turning back now.
“Alright, I’ll take the belt.”
It was actually the second old sash I had purchased that afternoon, in addition to a new natural-dyed blanket.
Was I getting a little too close to my subject matter? Or was I onto something?
Philippine textiles fi rst came to my attention when I learned that Sotheby’s had recently attempted to auction off a Philippine blanket at a starting price of PHP76,300 (US$1,600). The blanket didn’t sell, but it begged the question: were Philippine textiles, long mired in obscurity, fi nally making an international splash? The short answer is no. Antique Philippine textiles remain as obscure as ever, at least internationally. But as a visit to the home of any serious collector reveals, it’s not for wont of beauty or intricacy that this should be the case. Philippine weavings exhibit a dizzying array of patterns, weave types and colors, faithfully refl ecting the country’s cultural diversity. Even international collectors admit that certain antique textiles – silk tapestries from Sulu, old ikat (tie-dyed) abacá garments from Mindanao and pure piña – rival even those coming out of trendy Indonesia. According to sale price estimates provided by dealers, both international and local, they can command steep prices. Old piña luncheonettesets can sell for several thousand US dollars(piña is a silky fi ber derivedfrom the pineapple plant) – some piña makers in Manila can sell piña luncheon sets for up to US$4,000 (PHP 190,500).Rare old abacá costumes (abacá is similar to hemp) woven by the Mandaya, Bilaan, Bagobo and T’boli might also fetch that much. Even the less intricate cotton weavings of the Igorot tribes of North Luzon – Kalinga and Gaddang shirts, loincloths and betel nut pouches; Bontoc tapis (skirts); Itneg blankets – can fetch hundreds of dollars.
Mark A. Johnson, owner of the eponymous Asian Tribal and Art store in Marina del Rey, California says: “Typically, hundreds of dollars are paid for costumes and textiles, in the low thousands for good sculptures.”
Where, then, is the market? My quest to answer that eventually led me to Abra. But it had begun long before that, in Manila, where I discovered a handful of superb textile collections tucked away in private homes.
PRIVATE TREASURE TROVES
Danté Ferry and Robert Lane have been collecting textiles since the 1960s. If the market is undeveloped now, it was non-existent then. “The Kalinga were just coming out and starting to sell their wares, because [before] they never knew that there was money in their textiles,” Ferry says. “And most Filipinos were not fond of them. They considered them the dresses of the Igorots, whom they looked down upon as ‘mountain people’.”
Back then, deals were not hard to come by. Ferry used to snap up such items for just a few dollars.
Those items still make up the bulk of his collection, which numbers more than 50 textiles.
He showed me a rare indigodyed cape, a beautiful blue and red striped loincloth with exquisite beadwork embroideryand several strings of heirloom beads from Kalinga. He estimates them all to be about 70 to 80 years old.
All of them use natural dyes and locally grown cotton – two of the attributes that make older weavings more desirable and more valuable than contemporary tribal textiles, which usually utilize synthetic fi bers and dyes and/or imported cotton.
Robert Lane’s collection is even more impressive – so impressive, in fact, that he is opening a textile museum on the top fl oor of Silahis, the wonderful crafts store he owns in Manila’s Intramuros district.
“I’ve collected these things over the years to learn from them and they should be available for other people to learn from,” says Lane about the museum, which opened in May.
Back in the 1960s, Lane and his wife would spend weekends traipsing around the country “buying all sorts of things”. Many of those trips were to the southern Philippines and his collection includes several drawers of highly prized silk textiles from the predominantly Muslim provinces of Maranao, Maguindanao and Sulu. He admitted that he’d be hardpressed to fi nd such pieces today.
“I used to see them all the time. Now they’re very hard to fi nd.”
WHERE HAVE THEY GONE?
Most collectors agree with Lane that it’s extremely diffi cult to fi nd old Philippine tribal textiles now, although there is much debate about why that is.
The hot, humid weather, which has destroyed many old textiles, has something to do with it.
But Indonesia’s weather is just as sultry and the antique textile market there is as hot as the climate.
One theory is that, unlike the world’s textile hotbeds, ethnic materials in the Philippines no longer have any practical use for the people.
“Among all South-East Asian countries, we are going to lose our textile industry faster because our people don’t wear our traditional textiles,” said John Silva, a senior consultant with the Philippines’ National Museum. “We’re very Westernized, unlike Laos and Thailand where they still wear their traditional silk weaves.”
The lack of practical demand for new textiles suppresses the market for the old, threatening to relegate all Philippine tribal textiles to “museum material,” as Silva puts it.
Although UK-based textile collector Pamela Cross qualifi es that her area of expertise is not the Philippines, she takes the theory one step further, arguing that such textiles are already museum material.
“It is likely that many of the best older textiles are already in the hands of collectors” – a sentiment supported by several professionals.
This opaque market hardly entices amateur collectors with an interest in starting up a Philippine textile collection. But not everybody is convinced that tribal weavings are so scarce.
“Collectors looking for hidden gems may have trouble fi nding them because the locals may not realize it is the blanket that they sleep on when it is cold,” he said. I saw a little girl sleeping on an antique blanket in Bangued.”
Roy Hamilton, curator of Asian and Pacifi c collections at the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles, added that buyers should take into consideration the ethical aspects of buying up family heirlooms.
TO BUY OR NOT TO BUY
The good news for aspiring amateur collectors is that the low supply of collectible textiles has not driven up prices.
“There are just a few pieces in private collections and museums around the world; very few books and catalogs on the subject and only a handful of exhibitions, so there are very few opportunities for buyers to appreciate and acquire good pieces,” says Mark A. Johnson.
After some lean years, the Agaid family is back in business. In February, they even opened up a shop in Bangued. But it’s still a hard-fought existence in these parts and selling the family’s antiques is a constant temptation.
“We are selling again because we need money for the children to study at college,” explains Agaid’s sister, Norma Mina, the family’s senior weaver.
She hopes that the family’s efforts to revive traditional Itneg weaving will soon bear profi t so they can hang onto their heirlooms
It’s a hope I share as I board my tricycle back to Bangued
Buying Tips
■ Robert Lane
“The very fi rst thing in anything you are buying – whatever it is, even if it’s a piece of good horse fl esh – is to train your eye. Buying anything is a sensuous business. When you feel silk, you know if it’s good silk or bad silk. You train your eye to look at it.”
■ Danté Ferry
“You have to see a lot of them before you can see the difference between authentic natural-dyed textiles and synthetic-dyed reproductions. Commercial dyes are vivid. Natural dyes will be a little bit subdued.”
■ John Silva
“Usually around June or maybe May, before the start of the school season, go to public markets in some rural areas are invariably you’ll fi nd somebody from a tribe selling primitive wares: textiles, earrings, gongs, bracelets. They’re selling them because they need tuition money for their children.”
■ Conrad Del Villar
“Look at the type of cloth used: cotton is the traditional material. What are the colors like? Bontoc blankets, for example, usually come in the same four colors (black, white, red and yellow); southern Kalinga blankets tend to be red and yellow or red and black. Be wary of renovated textiles: a relatively old piece that is made to look like a much more elaborate piece by adding embroidery, beads or bangles of some sort.”
Where to buy
■ Manila
Try the antique shops along Mabini Street in Malate. There are also a smattering of antique shops carrying textiles in Makati, such as Talawisi onthe corner of Pasay Road and Makati Avenue. For new textiles, try Silahis (www.silahis.com) in Intramuros or Narda’s (www.nardas.com), which has three stores in Manila and two in Baguio. Kalinga and Bontoc textiles can be found on the third fl oor of Landmark Mall in Makati.
■ North Luzon
In North Luzon, Vigan is a textile hotbed. Mira Furniture Company (14 Bonifacio Street) sells a few old textiles and the Agaid family’s naturaldyed Itneg blankets and psychedelic Ilocano binakol blankets. Outside Vigan you can see abel weavers at work on handlooms in Barangay Camanggan, while Barangay Mindoro is home to a few binakol weavers. In Bangued, the Agaids’ store, Ethnic Crafts and Antiques, is on Bowen Street; the family compound is near Peñarubia. In Baguio, Easter Weaving Room has a huge selection of hand-woven but mostly synthetic textiles. Off the beaten track, Luisa’s Antique Shop in Bontoc and the Sleeping Beauty Inn in Tinglayen, Kalinga, sometimes have antiques.
■ Reading Up
Sinaunang Habi is a book with stunning photos of ethnic Philippine textiles. Other good books are: From the Rainbow’s Varied Hue: Textiles of the Southern Philippines, by Roy W. Hamilton; and Dreamweavers by Maria Elena P. Paterno, Sandra B. Castro, Rene B. Javellana and Corazon S Alvina.