WOVEN TO A FINE ART : PHILIPPINE TEXTILES AT A MARKET ENCOUNTER

Textile collectors, dealers, museum curators, fashion designers and weavers will feast their eyes on a comprehensive range of indigenous textiles at a bazaar to be held from February 1 to 3, 2009 at the ground floor of the National Museum of the Filipino People.

Featuring abaca, cotton inabel, hablon, jusi, piña, silk, and sinamay, Market Encounter will showcase traditional and contemporary fabrics and goods woven to a fine art on backstrap looms, handlooms and floor looms by weaving communities in far-flung provinces. The best the Philippines has to offer will be on sale at the bazaar along with selected pieces from other countries in the Southeast Asia.

The bazaar forms part of the 2nd ASEAN Traditional Textiles Symposium organized by the Museum Foundation of the Philippines and the National Museum of the Philippines, in partnership with the ASEAN Foundation and Japan/ASEAN Solidarity Fund.

"Our varying regional and ethnic cultures, belief, dialects and art woven together in these textiles are reflective of the Filipino workmanship. The intelligence, creativity, and stories of triumph and survival of our ancestors find expression in these unique artworks we produce," bazaar co-chair Cedie Lopez-Vargas says.

Originally made of banana leaf fibers, jusi is constructed in a plain weave with a crisp finish. The silk organza fabric is widely used in manufacturing Barong Tagalogs, evening dresses and trimmings.

Fashion artiste Dita Sandico-Ong will showcase her ingenious use of banana and other indigenous plant fibers imaginatively interwoven with traditional and ethnic Filipino fabrics.

Famous for her finely crafted products made of natural fibers, Soumak-owner Yola Johnson created a line of woven fabrics including sinamay for the home, exclusively designed for the bazaar.

The province of Antique boasts of the versatile patadyong, made of hand-woven textiles called hablon. It comes in muted colors and is sometimes, combined with silk threads. Used as a skirt, hammock, apron, curtain, tablecloth, pillowcase and blanket, the patadyong represents an over-a-century- old weaving tradition in that province and elsewhere on the island of Panay.

Shiny and intricate, handmade t'nalak cloth takes months to accomplish. The T'boli (delete tribal) communities in South Cotabato continue this millennia-old tradition of preparing abaca, repeatedly beating and soaking the fibers to achieve flexibility and higher dye quality.

The designs are handed down from generation to generation or they come to the weaver in a dream from a local deity, who mandates that the weaver include these patterns or suffer the consequences.

Rich black and deep reddish-brown geometric patterns are typical in t'nalak designs. Dyed with herb extracts of permanent colors, the abaca fibers symbolize the people of South Cotabato's fondest aspirations.

"Culturally diverse and economically enterprising, the Philippine textile industry celebrates the continuity of our time-honored tradition and highlights the competence of our weavers in bringing out the intrinsic beauty of our world-class textiles," Armita Rufino, Museum Foundation of the Philippines president, says.

The symposium has been made possible through the auspices of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, the Department of Tourism, the National Commission on Culture and the Arts, the Filipino Heritage Festival, Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Trade and Industry, and Philippine Airlines.

The bazaar is open to the public for free from 12:00 to 6:00 p.m. on February 1, and from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on February 2 and 3. Interested parties are invited to register for the symposium itself at the special discounted registration fee of P5,000 for local residents.

For inquiries, please call the 2nd ASEAN Traditional Textiles Symposium Secretariat at telephone number 404-2685, or visit http://aseantextile s09.museumfounda tionph.org/.

For more Museum Foundation events and activities please visit our website at http://museumfounda tionph.org/ news/