The paper people

Even in this electronic age we can’t live without paper. It’s so much a part of our lives we take it for granted–use it, throw it–and don’t give paper a second thought.

But here are two people who have pushed paper to a new level, exploring its limitless possibilities and won international acclaim for the art that they have made out of paper.

Tony Gonzales and Tes Pasola share a passion for paper like no other. They turned it into something that is not only beautiful and functional, but one that also celebrates Filipino creativity and excellence, bringing pride and honor–and precious foreign exhange–to the country.

Both members of Movement 8, a group of utterly talented and creative artists and designers, Tony and Tes share a long-standing love affair with paper, perhaps even longer than their partnership.

Dubbed as the Philippines’ "Paper Man" for pioneering the use of handmade paper in furnishings and home accessories, Tony’s ingenious creations for A Greeting Card Co., an export firm he put up in 1997, shows his unique design sensibility and clever grasp of materials.

Tes, on the hand, is the brains behind Mind Masters, Inc., a 33-year-old company she established with her late husband Ronnie. Its earlier products include unique gift and utility boxes made of wheat and batik on paper in different sizes and shapes like rabbits, trees, and flowers. Today, it is one of the country’s leading exporters of handmade and hand-painted paper products. The company takes pride in its inventive, radical, and often aggressive design ideas, including a line of James Bound vases made of old newspapers that won for Tes the G-Mark Award for product excellence in Japan in 2003.

Neither can pinpoint exactly when their fascination for paper began, but both never stop exploring its endless possibilities. Although they don’t work together–with each running his/her own company–Tony and Tes collaborated in earlier years, doing what they love–and do–best: playing and having fun.

Tony was a struggling artist slogging it out in the advertising world when he stumbled into the creative bin of the Pasolas. "I invited Tony to join Mind Masters, basically just to come up with new ideas and concepts. It was all play and fun for us. Work was just an incidental part of it," says Tes.

Fun meant designing what is up to this day the most expensive greeting card purchased by any buyer. Tes recounts: "We met this German buyer who asked us to come up with different designs for greeting cards, from which he would choose about 10. We took our sweet time until we one day realized we barely had a week left to complete the designs, so we locked ourselves up in our workroom and just basically threw things together. We had all these crazy ideas, like attaching paper clips, wires, and whatnot, until we couldn’t think of anything else. I got a heap of paper retaso from the floor, placed it on the card, and that, ironically, became the best-seller."

Tony and Tes ended up designing 36 greeting cards. The buyer liked all of them and happily bought the whole collection–at their asking price. That line of cards continued as a bestseller for half a dozen years (the buyer, incidentally, is still ordering greeting cards from them). What happened next was more "playing" and more crazy ideas.

"I broached an idea to Pops (referring to his father, Fred), who is a mechanical engineer, about producing handmade paper. The next thing I knew he built this really large paper mill in Legaspi City, probably the biggest in the country at that time, which could produce about 3,000 sheets a day," Tony relates, still flabbergasted.

Tes, on the other hand, was ecstatic. "When I saw it, my jaw dropped and I shouted, playground!" This "playground" spawned the birth of GSG Industrial Corporation, a family-owned company of the Gonzaleses, which is today one of the largest exporters of paper products.

During this time, the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM) was starting to promote handmade paper. The DTI agency brought in a team of experts and consultants from Japan to teach Filipino manufacturers about proper handmade paper production techniques. They were given methods for coming up with really clean, flawless paper, and formulas for achieving the right texture, among other things.

"We were like…hello? Why should we copy what the Japanese do when clearly we can’t, because they have been doing this for centuries?" shares Tony. "I thought maybe it was time we came up with our own kind of handmade paper, use our techniques, with our own designs."

They did just that–"in our new playground," Tes laughs. As it turns out, Legaspi City is an ideal location for producing handmade paper. Situated just below the slopes of Mayon Volcano, the plant had access to mountain spring water, which is very important in producing quality paper, and abaca supply was abundant. Cellulosic agricultural wastes (rice husk and hull, coconut coir, banana, nipa, palm, water lily, leaves, flowers, salago, cogon, and grass) from nearby farming communities were also readily available.

"We threw in all sorts of different stuff; one sheet would have ferns, shells and ipil-ipil seeds, others had metal... We put in anything and everything we could find, and amazingly came up with beautiful handmade paper. We called it the ‘Lupa’ paper. It’s the sort of paper the Japanese would hate," Tes laughs.

Apparently not, because during one of the paper conferences Tes attended abroad, the Japanese saw the Lupa paper and raved about it endlessly. "They said it was something they never would have thought of," she recalls.

Bolder now, they started joining international fairs, including the Messe Frankfurt show in Germany, S’cene Interior in Paris, and later other fairs in Japan, Australia, and the USA.

It didn’t take long, though, before other countries took notice of their innovations and started copying their designs. Tony and Tes knew it was time to go back to their playground and have fun again. This time, they punched holes on the paper, sewed and put embroidery on it, even tried weaving it. The possibilities were limited only by their imagination and enthusiasm–and these were boundless.

To say Tony and Tes don’t run out of new ideas is an understatement. How else would one explain all the exceptional things they have come up with through the years, winning countless Katha Awards for Best Product Design from Manila F.A.M.E. International, CITEM’s bi-annual trade show for home furnishings, holiday décor, and fashion accessories, or their outstanding collections at the April 2005 edition of Manila F.A.M.E. where both collaborated with different Philippine manufacturers –Tony in home furnishings and Tes in fashion accessories–in the fair’s two central settings?

For the jewelry and fashion accessories set up, Tes used wire, fabric, resin, plastic, crystals, even balloons, to make funky and playful accessories like bangles and neck slingers. Instead of mounting the pieces she had live models wearing the items in a constantly changing tableau, which had rain as theme: a downpour of ceiling to floor strands of paper twine studded with Swarowski crystals.

Tony, on the other hand, experimented with the country’s extensive selection of materials and came up with an absolutely brilliant collection of houseware and furnishings, from larger-than-life size baskets that turn out to be settees to resin loveseats with a molded in pastoral scene.

Tony and Tes are also involved as design consultants for several private companies and non-government organizations, "to satisfy our craving for other materials," Tes explains. But there is no doubt that paper is, and will always be, their first love.

Although currently, Tony and Tes choose to work independently in separate offices in Parañaque and even participate in trade fairs worldwide separately, there always hovers the possibility that these two friends and partners will play together again, and unleash upon the international design scene yet another reminder that paper isn’t just something you write on or wrap fish with.