My favorite antiques are Maranao majestic iron rods that swished at a Lanao del Sur Sultan’s command – "My daughter shall marry the bridegroom of my choice" – or when he struck it on the ground for an order: "Rido!" I have Patis Tesoro’s stiff tiny pastel baros from years past, framed and hanging in my computer room. Last year at the Quezon Ball, Undersecretary Agnes Devanadera honored Patis with an exhibit of her timeless collection of baro’t saya. Patis couldn’t remember she had designed four of my gowns that were on exhibit. Nevertheless, Patis has made a name as someone who specializes in clothes from centuries gone by. I value handmade baskets from Lanao, which Dave Baradas owned, that had lived in the past carrying vegetables, clothes, buntings, and dried fish. I used to go nuts over Terry and Ricky Baylosis’ wooden colored dabakan (giant wooden drums) that were once found only in mosques to call the Muslims to prayer. Henry Beyer’s Bontoc pipes and gong handles from the Ifugao provinces are in glass cases. I couldn’t resist purchasing them as a group for my collection. If you haven’t seen the patina and mother-of-pearl inlay on the colonial furniture of Paulino Que, you’ve missed items that are fit for a museum. It left me in awe, but Ogie Periquet and Omeng Esguerra’s collection of smoothly polished wooden furniture from Bohol and contemporary benches without the colonial years are now in my living room, of which some have been left purposely dull. In the long run, it’s better that precious collections are bought by locals to keep them in the Philippines, safe in private homes.
What is Filipino has become a frustrating exercise in hunting. In fact, in Davao, there are hardly any Bagobo clothes hanging at the Aldovinco Shopping Center. Muslims say they cannot find tops and trousers made of abaca fiber to sell from this ethnic minority that occupy the lower slopes at Mt. Apo in Davao. The Bagobos migrated there from fear of conquerors and to preserve their spirit worship. What is actually left about other Mindanaoan tribes may be found in Nikki Coseteng’s coffee-table book Habi. The photographs by Dick Baldovino and Wig Tysmans are so dramatic that you can almost feel the texture of the abaca used in the clothes. Your eyes will feast on seeing men wearing close-fitted beaded jackets that extended to the waistline decorated with fine geometric designs and tight abaca trousers that scarcely reached the knees with beaded edges and bells. I have in a frame in my dining room a beaded hemp cloth bag with bells and pompoms that was owned by the gentle Datu Oscar Undang, the Bagobo chieftain who wore it across his chest. His head ornament was of flowing threads of pompoms that adorned in his lifetime his forehead to his shoulders.
In the ’80s, this tribe adopted me, and I noticed the men wore two belts, one to hold the trousers and the other to support two knives: one was the fighting knife, and the other the working knife. Working knives were meant to be worn daily when they exchanged almaciga (resin), beeswax and the fruit of the lumbang tree, biao for fuel, rice, iron beads, shells, hemp, clay pottery, and salted and dried fish.
Two bolos! The royalty of Sulu wore two bladed krises of gold and silver to signify the male and female. One was worn on the left, while the other was on the right side of his waist. Both of these krises now rest on an Ifugao bed in my living room. I like the contrast between the strong and gentle, and north and south.
Like many indigenous women, their arms and ankles were encircled with shells and beads that were exchanged by barter from seaside dwellers. Brass anklets and bracelets rattled with iron balls inside them. Did they weigh a lot? Yes, they did, based on a pair I bought in a market in Cotabato, which is now on display on my wooden plate from Palawan.