Cebu X 2

Cebu as the Furniture Design Destination of Asia is not a luminous but tenuous idea that withers when taken out for reality airing on Cebu’s implacably bright beaches. Or collapses under the strain of intense competition from other Asian countries, particularly Indonesia and China. It is not a far-fetched goal, but something enticingly within reach. A professional group in Cebu called Design Guild Philippines, which is affiliated with the Cebu Furniture Industries Foundation, is determined to make it happen.

"We have the edge," says DGP president Corito Escario-Yu. "Around the world, we have gained a reputation as furniture makers for a high-end market. And we’ve been attracting a lot of attention because of our excellent design and our innovative and creative use of local raw materials, which make up that value-added feature in our furniture designs. Design is going to be our niche in this competitive field."

DGP boasts of a dedicated group of furniture manufacturers in Cebu who’ve had professional training in furniture design, among them Escario-Yu, Debbie Palao, Ramon Castellanos (a Spaniard from the Royal Academy of Sweden who has made Cebu his base), Luisa Robinson, Rene Ybañez, Kenneth Cobonpue and Bernice Streegan-Montenegro.

They got together in 1994 originally for the purpose of doing special work for Cebu’s annual furniture exhibition when the Cebu group dissociated themselves from the Chamber of Furniture Industries of the Philippines, based in Manila, and assumed the nature of a foundation. The breakaway was an expected move as Cebu, after all, is responsible for 70 percent (the latest 2001 figure) of total Philippine furniture exports, and has come to be associated with world-class furniture design and construction. To the world’s buyers, it’s always "Cebu furniture," never "Manila furniture."

It didn’t take long before Henri Schumacher of the European Chamber of Commerce took notice of what DGP was doing and gave it curatorship of several Philippine participations in furniture fairs in Milan, Italy, and Cologne, Germany.

DGP was soon involved in what it describes as "the enhancement of furniture design through the exchange of knowledge and experience in exhibitions, symposiums and publications." Also in 1998 DGP conducted its first Estilo Competition, held in conjunction with the annual international furniture and furnishings show in Cebu, which was held in February this year and henceforth has been named "Cebu X" (X for exciting, extraordinary, experience, X factor, according to the organizers). This year’s Estilo competition was the culmination of the guild’s design course conducted by its founding members last year in Bacolod City (the dependable source of beautifully crafted furniture complements) and Cebu.

This year’s Estilo competition in Cebu X yielded such exciting talents as Pocholo Pedrano, who uses cane to convey chairs with Zen, Italian, English or ultramodern attitude; Arnel Santillan with sculptural forms in laminated wood veneer doubling as a very functional CD storage; Christine Gonzaga who mixes nylon fishnet and fiberglass for her "Angora" lighting; Herman Sanchez who weds industrial steel washers and resin to create vases and trays; Mario Nazareno whose rocking chair "Hayahay" is a felicitous blend of rattan and abaca.

The corresponding award for participants in Cebu X 2002 was called "Mugma" ("to create" in Cebuano) which honored the incomparable designs and craftsmanship of makers of furniture and furniture complements in Cebu, Bacolod, Pampanga and Manila.

Impressive among these participants was DGP’s own external vice president, the young maverick Kenneth Cobonpue whose dividers of wire and pulp paper, "Kabuki" buffet cabinet of bleached lawaan, and "Lifesaver" shelving system done with, yikes, condoms, were nothing short of stunning. DGP past president, now director Debbie Palao showed her wizardry with veritable found objects: kapok pods, coconut spikelets, gugo fiber, abaca, seagrass and the inner rounds of bamboo. Her furniture and accessories are exciting concepts that are forever mutating.

This year’s show proved once more the masterful ways Cebu furniture makers and designers work around the traditional and the classic. As Corito Escario-Yu puts it, "Cebu understands or always seems to hit upon the traditionalist look with an air of today-ness that Europeans love."

Josephine Aboitiz Booth, the grand duchess of the Cebu furniture industry, asserts, "There will always be a market for beautiful and classic furniture." She should know: her Mehitabel Furniture Company has been closely working with and exporting classic furniture to the legendary McGuire Furniture Co. since 1948.

The beguiling irony of this Cebu industry is that it earned a world-class reputation with little more than native skill and artistry. Cebu furniture companies have draftsmen, seldom designers–and there’s a world of difference between them. "If you’re drafting, you’re not designing," says Palao. "Talent is not enough. You have to know the technical aspects."

Design Guild Philippines now conducts workshops and seminars for draftsmen to professionalize their ranks. At the Ecotech in Cebu they have hammered together a basic course in furniture design which they offer as a package to manufacturers so they will send their workers. The guild has been slowly involving the owners, making them associate members. "Because we own our companies, we can steer them in the direction we want," says Palao. And that direction is toward greater professionalism, one eminent idea is being to convince owners to "consider royalties for their designers," according to Escario-Yu.

The other irony in this Cebu industry which has been around since the early ’70s is that no school in Cebu offers industrial design or courses related to furniture design. "Since 1996 we’ve been talking with Cebu colleges and universities about supporting Cebu’s important industry through relevant courses that will provide the talent and skills needed by the industry," says Palao.

The guild has convinced the Department of Trade and Industry to provide a two-year associate course in furniture design in TESDA with the support of CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency). DGP has also been trying to link up with academe (recently with the Don Bosco Technical Center in Cebu City) and building an international database and website to link up with other designers throughout the world. "We are also trying to establish an exchange program through CIDA funding," says Palao.

The dream is to put up a Design Exchange Center patterned after that of Toronto which the group had visited and set them to thinking of what can be done and what they should be doing in a Cebu scenario. "The essence of the guild is to share what we know," says Escario-Yu. The immediate objective comes close to home: To promote "mutual professional respect" among manufacturers and designers in Cebu, especially when it comes to patents (for processes) and copyrights (for design). "It’s utopia but it can be done," says Palao.

"It can be done" is likewise the spirit that guides this Cebu industry whose eminent artistic challenge–and feat–is, as Debbie Palao puts it, "to take a leaf and transform it into a chair."