Living excellence

Sometime in the 18th century, Immanuel Kant said, “Three things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe – the starry heavens above me, the moral law within me, and the glory of excellence around me.”

After I resigned from government in the year 2000, I was in a plane bound for San Francisco, as a stopover on my way to Madrid, Spain, for a board meeting of an international foundation that had just elected me to their board. There were only three other people in my section of the plane, two of whom I knew pretty well, Bobby Romulo and Lito Camacho, who were both still in government. The fourth was a lady I did not know.

We were seated far away from each other in order to be able to enjoy the advantage of privacy and solitude. All of a sudden, the smartly dressed and very good-looking lady who was seated about three rows behind me approached and asked me, “Excuse me, but you are wearing a Molano, aren’t you?”

What I was wearing was indeed a Molano, but a really simple one with the traditional but excellently carved gold links that, at that time, characterized Celia Molano’s designs. It was like saying, “You are wearing a Bulgari.”

The lady introduced herself as Yolanda Stern, chairperson of the Philippine-American Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco, who is married to Thomas Stern, a noted surgeon practicing in the same state. What she was wearing was a far more beautiful piece than mine but with the identical burly gold links. “You are wearing a Molano, too,” was my answer.

This, as far as I can remember, happened in 2001, and that became my introduction to Celia Molano’s world of excellently crafted and designed jewelry. I had not discovered Celia Molano because all the while, for a good 19 years of my life, I was working in government, and there simply was no time to even know of her. The daily work schedule of a government functionary, at a certain level, can become so hectic.

I first heard Celia Molano’s name sometime in April 2000, although she had been in the jewelry-making business since the early ‘80s with a couple of coffee-table books already having been published. Out of government with some free time now, I was given her phone number and made an appointment with her at her house in Ayala Alabang, and witnessed a world of excellence that prevailed in her “home showroom.”

On October 14, just about a month ago, Celia Molano held an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila and it was indeed an evening that celebrated the “glory of excellence” Kant was talking about. Every piece – a necklace, a bracelet, a pair of earrings – told the story of how excellently the design was crafted and how superbly the work to create them had been undertaken. Superb craftsmanship glowed through every glass case, in which the Molano pieces were displayed.

As Celia delivered her short remarks, her last lines impressed me: “While working on the pieces in this exhibit, I experienced endless delight, putting together many interesting artifacts from various cultures. The wealth of stories that came to my mind and gave me so much happiness, as I strung them or recreated them into personal ornaments, has been boundless. That others also find delight in my work has strengthened my enthusiasm to create more art and share them with you.”

These words remind me of what Katherine Graham said early in her life: “To love what you do and feel that it matters, you have to live excellence – how can anything be more delightful and more fun!”

Actually, as Celia made her remarks, her husband, Jose Molano Jr., was standing several feet in front of her near where she stood before the microphone. It was when Joe took up his assignment in Indonesia with the United Nations International Labour Organization towards the end of 1984 that Celia really got started on her jewelry endeavor. She became thoroughly excited to see so many rare and beautiful beads of different origins from Sumatra and Java. According to her, there were also Venetian, Dutch and African beads. She found antique beads in the antique shops of Jalan, Surabaya and Bogor, and among the wares of antique peddlers who actually brought them from house to house.

The excitement that enveloped Celia every time she saw the abundance of valuable beads of various shapes, sizes and colors provided the inspiration and opportunity to create exquisite pieces of jewelry and ornaments. Intertwining them with gold pieces paved the way to an extremely successful undertaking, always with excellence at the very heart of every piece of work – something that has been the magnificent common denominator of every Molano, as Yoly Stern would put it years later in 2001. This has been going on in Celia Molano’s life for approximately two and a half decades now.

It continued when Joe’s career brought them back home, and on Oct. 14, I did not miss that part when she looked at Joe and told us, her audience, “My husband has been my inspiration and my love.” I thought that, too, was excellently done!

Molano jewelry has been shown in 24 exhibits in our country and other parts of the world. When Celia first arrived in Manila and wore a necklace that she had designed from materials she had discovered in Indonesia, National Artist Arturo Luz saw it and offered to do an exhibition of her works at the Luz Gallery in 1987. It was a great success that it encouraged Celia, as she tells it now, to launch a major exhibit in Indonesia. With the support and encouragement of then Ambassador and Mrs. Ramon Farolan, the exhibit at the Mandarin Hotel in Jakarta was such an amazingly impressive exhibit. Excellence characterized her work. In fact, in a book published in Jakarta, a reference to her work stated that “it took a foreigner to open our eyes to the value and beauty of our beads.”

Molano jewelry was exhibited in Delaware, USA, in 1988; at the Beverly Hills Hilton in Los Angeles; an exhibit in Chicago under the aegis of the Philippine Consulate General; the Bowers Museum of Cultural Arts, Santa Ana, California; Museum Kampa, Prague, Czech Republic; Orogemma, Vicenzo Oro in Italy; Rockwall House in Sydney, Australia; and of course a number of times in Indonesia and Manila.

Just like the Indonesian reaction to her first exhibit, which was one of awe and amazement at the excellent manner in which Molano had created such beautiful pieces of work from antique beads that had actually been forgotten by the Indonesians themselves in the early ‘80s, every exhibit thereafter displayed excellence.

Many who had seen her work, Indonesians and expatriates alike, soon started collecting beads and attempted to string them. This certainly led to an increase in demand for beads in the Indonesian antique market.

As Celia herself said, “We know from archaeology that beads were created during different periods of human civilization. They have been traded and exchanged, passed on from hand to hand, and transported from one part of the world to another.”

The excellent Molano pieces that we saw at her last exhibit were indeed put together using indigenous materials mostly from the Philippines, Indonesia and India.

Not everyone, however, can create the works of art that indeed describe the superlative craft of Celia Molano. Not everyone has the God-given ability to live excellence. Celia Molano is still doing so, and you can see the delight and happiness that Graham talked about, shining through those gifted Molano eyes.

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Thanks for your e-mails sent to jtl@pldtdsl.net.