A new book on Philippine textiles
WE all know the variety and uniqueness of indigenous Philippine fabrics. But the terms used, particularly for fabrics used in the past, in the Spanish colonial period, can be so numerous as to be confusing. There are multiple terms for one fabric, or you have many fabrics falling under one term. Moreover, their origin and history could become vague when a multiplicity of terms are in use.
Well, there is an enlightening book just published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press,
by the Filipino textile scholar Sandra Castro.
This is a slim book but putting it together involved a lot of research work in libraries all over the world checking out primary and secondary sources. Basically, the historical survey and lexicon in this book are derived from the Spanish colonial period where these primary and secondary sources come from. It also has enlightening images.
The oldest Philippine fabric is in the National Museum of the Philipines, a burial cloth fragment from Banton island in the Visayas. It is abaca (
and dated 1400-1500. This is pre-colonial, prehistoric. But abaca, an endemic plant of the Philippines, provided the material for a variety of cloth and other woven materials then and now. The different terms used to describe abaca products are usually based on
lustrous, transparent, an amazing variety of weaves that give the different names to the resulting fabric. Abaca comes from a variety of banana plant and it is also
- porary Filipino designers now use it for their couture clothes
It was the Spanish missionaries in the
and listed Philippine textiles. Depending on what part of the country they were in, the friars used terms or lexicon that are as varied as the different areas of the Philippine archipelago had different languages; so did the textile vocabulary vary from place to place.
Basically, the Philippine textiles of those times were used for tribute or
- pulco trade, exported along with Chinese silks and Indian cottons. The latter were ubiquitous items on the trade ships that
and America, along with Philippine textiles.
Moreover, Manila being the entrepôt where the goods for the galleon trade were consolidated, it was also a market for what came in. Chinese silks and Indian cottons became part of elite dressing for the Filipinos and foreign residents in the city. We see these in the images of the time. But it can also be said that these fabrics were affordable to the ordinary class of people and worn at their discretion or for special occasions. They were familiar to all.
Abaca in many woven forms was used as both tribute and trade item. Piña was another Philippine textile that was traded in the Manila-Acapulco trade. But while both these Philippine textiles were eclipsed in quantity in the galleon trade by the Chinese silks and Indian cottons, they retain to this day their iconic status in identity as premier materials for Philippine textiles, and were recognized as such in the galleon trade.
Piña comes from the pineapple plant which was introduced to the Philippines either by the Portuguese via Macao or the Spanish via the New World. Both abaca and piña are now considered indigenous to the Philippine archipelago, though it is only abaca that is endemic.
What is most interesting in the book is how they were used and how they were made between the 18th and 19th
Manila Galleon Trade.
Piña became a gift for royalty as well as elite clothing, while abaca was used for a variety of things, from rope, to skirts, to collar stiffeners. Sandra Castro mentions that somehow the abaca collar stiffener,
was often listed in ship cargo and personal possessions. This term in its various forms shows up in disparate listings, including the testament of a Peruvian in 1584, which is just short of astonishing. Apparently, as an export product was abundant and well-known. It is mentioned in London sources with a variation in name. Yet today the term is quite unfamiliar as collar stiffeners now use new materials.
Philippine textiles at the beginning of the colonial era were tribute cloth which
became commercial export items, along with the Chinese and Indian textiles that were integral to the Manila-Acapulco trade. Eventually they had an international market as demonstrated by the collar stiffeners and skirt underlays that were made of woven abaca.
Interestingly, the watercolor drawings of Filipino costumes as drawn by Damian Domingo and Justiniano Asuncion in the 18th century depict the elite wearing patterned silk — known as — as trousers though they could be used as other items of clothing like skirts. The textile for was patterned silk from China. Some of it was sturdy and could be made into uniforms for the military.
The galleon trade also made available to the Manila market cheap Chinese silk thread which would be woven locally. This silk thread was commonly used to weave tapis, the wrap that women placed over their skirts in the fashion of the time. Jusi, a woven silk cloth, also used Chinese silk thread, and Malabon (among other places in Bulacan and farther areas) were known for their silk-weaving to produce clothing items.
a type of cloth woven with blue and white cotton threads, was woven in Ilocos and Bulacan. During the Philippine Revolution, it was used for uniforms of the Philippine revolutionary army.
All in all, this book is a fascinating identification, historical explanation and narrative of the past in Philippine textiles. It concerns not just textiles but history, a fascinating look at times past that can explain much of today.
Sandra Castro has written on textiles before, including a thesis on the piña collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She has put Philippine textiles and other textiles in use in the Philippines in context with the country’s history. The result is informative, fascinating and impressive.