Kathy & Kathy maKe jewelry liKe they used to
I’ve only seen Tamburin jewelry encased in glass in museums and worn with devotion by my beloved lola and great grandmother as necklaces. The Filipiniana jewelry’s preciousness is rooted in its sacredness, being patterned after the rosary; plus it’s hand-crafted in filigree, not hand-engraved.
This distinction is of the essence. It’s also why it’s so rare. To create filigree, a skilled goldsmith must first stretch fine metals, starting out as a block, then made molten and shaped into raw pellets of your desired karat, and then pounded until it is as thin as a piece of thread. The platero then bends, twists, and folds the metal threads; it can take months to create a necklace, a bracelet, or a pair of earrings. It sounds meticulous and time-consuming because it is.
A jewelry collector’s best-kept-secret until now, Manila-based Ilongga childhood friends Kathy Sarabia-Babst and Kathy Gregorio-Añover’s four-year-old brand Kathy & Kathy has been upholding Tamburin in three ways. One, they create one-off, custom designs with Tamburin elements as their signature; their heritage and nostalgia for keepsakes in their DNA. Kathy B hails from the Sarabia family of optometrists. Both Kathys grew up close to their grandmothers, both collectors of fine jewelry and also good friends.
They broke into the market as locket makers, each frame and chain customizable in 14k or 18k, in white gold, yellow gold, or rose gold, decorated either with a photograph, a pearl, a colored enamel, a cameo... It’s up to you. (The lockets are now under their Sentimiento line.) Experience taught the two everything they needed to know. Without formal training, Gregorio-Anover creates the first draft by sketching or making a mock-up on Photoshop while Sarabia-Babst oversees the workshops and production.
They picked up from their grandmothers’ jewelers the Old World way of personalizing service. The Kathys deliver pieces personally, sometimes absorbing market price changes on gold for regulars. “We charge by the price of gold. We don’t have overhead,” Gregorio-Añover notes.
“We work with pre-ban raw antique ivory and South Sea pearls from Palawan.
Kung pwede lang local lahat but corals and cameos, we have to source it from Torre del Greco in Italy. That’s the only place they make them. We really go to Hong Kong trade shows or to Europe to source materials requested by our clients. May clients
kami na ganon,” she adds. Second, they maintain a workshop for eight full-time artisans specializing in stonesetting, forging and filigree. “You can say we’ve professionalized being alahera. None of our designs are made by machines. Everything is by hand. If there’s a design that can only be done by machine, we can’t do it,” says Gregorio-Anover.
Every Kathy & Kathy piece takes three to four months to complete and for good reason. Handmade jewelry, especially filigree, requires a high level of craftsmanship. To keep the craft alive, this is where number three comes in: their Sinagtala Project. “Those that work for us are medyo matanda na. The craft needs to be passed down and needs continuous training. Hindi pwedeng you just know. At night, the workshop doubles as a school for aspiring young plateros. We provide them an allowance so they don’t have to do extra work to earn so they can practice,” Gregorio-Añover explains. They now have four students and are hoping to train at least 11 more.
The Kathys built their business through one-on-one presentations and established a relationship with clients this way. They recently opened their lifestyle showroom in Makati not only to reflect the premium of their products and showcase what their artisans are capable of. “We didn’t understand why people treat jewelry like, ‘I’ll buy that, magkano ba yan?’ Sa amin, I don’t care if it’s gold or silver,” says Gergorio-Añover. “When you commission a custom piece, you have already attached sentimental value to it. You order it because you can pass it on to your daughter, not just because you’re keeping it in your vault. All jewelry is mahal naman eh especially if it’s gold but is it meaningful to you?”
The unveiling will be held with the launch of a limited edition 12-piece collection, Jardineria, inspired by the gardens of their hometown using peach and white corals, Italian red corals, sardonyx, cameos, and turquoise to create the likeness of bougainvillea,
santan, sampaguita, ilang-ilang and gumamela. But this launch is in no way a shift to retail. Along with years’ worth of prototypes on display, “It’s a canvas for people who cannot foresee what they like,” says Sarabia-Babst. A step in modernizing the Tamburin for the “Modern Marias,” as epitomized by their brand ambassadors, television exec Tootsy Angara and lifestyle blogger Nicole Ortega.
***