A love letter to the art of handwork
Andrew Robertson, author of The Story of Writing, said, “Writing is among the greatest inventions in human history, perhaps the greatest invention, since it made history possible.”
In the Philippines, anything before the arrival of the Spanish in 1521 is considered prehistory. It’s not that the inhabitants of the islands we now call the Philippines did not record their history, it’s just that hardly any survived. So we rely not only on archeology but on protohistoric documents or written accounts of travelers to the Philippines before the Spanish arrival. The downside to this is the subjective nature of the accounts.
Case in point, the resulting outcry as the result of the House of Representatives’ approval of the “Philippines Indigenous and Traditional Writing Systems Act,” declaring Baybayin as the country’s national writing system.
In an interview with CNN Philippines, cultural researcher Leo Emmanuel Castro discussed a resurgence of Baybayin in the past years because of a variety of reasons, such as a rise in interest in one’s ancestral roots (especially for the hyphenated Filipinos across the globe seeking identity) and the local arts and crafts scene that used Baybayin as applied “content” for their craft.
Writing is among the greatest inventions in human history, perhaps the greatest invention, since it made history possible. —Andrew Robertson
Baybayin, however, as Castro pointed out, was not the only ancient script. There were others but early Spanish colonizers were mostly exposed to the coastal communities first, where Baybayin was widespread, than upland communities. We still see the Surat Mangyan, Tagbanau and Pala’wan, and Kulitan among other ancient scripts being used today.
In my life, writing has been a constant. I wrote a daily journal and used the bullet point journal diary format way before it became a trend. I was also prolific in handwritten letters back when we needed to go to the post office to send them. I even started embellishing my own stationery and today, with the help of Photoshop and a printer, I have managed to carry on with this old practice, hoping to brighten the day of friends and family to whom I still write letters.
I find joy in making things with my hands. Not only because I’m very crafty but because I grew up when things were still made by hand. When I was doing recovery work at my uncle the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos’ old home in San Juan in 2021, one of my tasks was to recover and organize for storage all the personal belongings of my uncle and my aunt found on site. I came across ternos and barongs so exquisitely crafted they would bring tears to my eyes. I was in awe of the amazing workmanship. Unfortunately on some, particularly the calado embroidery, the ravages of time and the elements had taken their toll.
Calado or Philippine lace is a type of embroidery that uses the pulled and drawn threadwork and piercing technique to embellish textile, often jusi or piña. Nowadays we see them mostly on barongs, some ternos, and heritage-inspired contemporary fashion.
Since it requires hours of painstaking work, calado can be cost prohibitive. Cost notwithstanding, there has been a resurgence in interest in calado. Communities in Batangas and Laguna are trying to build their workforce. Interestingly enough, I was told younger generations prefer to spend their time on their phones and really have no interest to take up the skill.
Heritage-conscious entrepreneurs like Len Cabili of Filip+Ina and Anne Marie Saguil of Amarie have been working very hard at building this work force by creating lovely pieces of wearable art for people, to help generate income for these calado communities. Looking at the pieces in my aunt’s collection, I lamented the damaged state of the calado on some of the ternos and begged my Ilocana cousin Senator Imee R. Marcos to find a way to have them repaired. She did. She suggested I learn the skill.
I’m an embroidery enthusiast, so I welcomed the suggestion. I was able to locate 80-year-old Rosario Alejandro or Manang Charing, a caladista and bordadora, who worked on my aunt’s ternos in the ’70s and ’80s.
Manang Charing said she was too old to sew with her failing eyesight but after much begging and cajoling, I managed to convince her to give me lessons via Facebook Messenger. She didn’t know how to work and her children, living in other parts of the metro, weren’t around to help. This was in 2021 at the time seniors were still not allowed to leave their homes. Manang Charing is from the old Tagalog world and it was wonderful to have to use the traditional po, ho, and other honorifics when texting or speaking to her. Her Tagalog was deep and technical as well. I had to ask a friend to translate words like kayon (filament), palahay (horizontal or weft threads), paayong (vertical/standing up or warp threads), and hilatsa (the “right” direction) ng jusi… and terms like bigas ng square, just to name a few. Amid instructions and questions were photos of my progress. Every day for the entire month of February 2021, we spent hours sending messages and photos, along with some tsismis, back and forth in deep Tagalog! I may need more practice but at least now I know the basics. I have managed to repeat the process more than a few times.
After the intense recovery operation, which I undertook on my own, though I had about two people helping me every now and then, I come back now and again to slowly begin the task of laying down the groundwork for the storing, identification, labeling, and digitization of the collections recovered for easy retrieval and return. It’s mostly archival work.
Just recently, as I was choosing which books from my uncle’s library needed to be prioritized for digitization, I came across some books with edits and curious cut-out pages. I sent photos to Imee to see if she knew what they were about. She messaged back confirming it was her father’s work but she had no clue what the cutouts meant. I chuckled. This was how my uncle edited books before personal computers and their highlight-delete and/or cut-and-paste features. Even with books already published, he was a perfectionist to a fault.
Currently I am working on a project involving my uncle’s published works. For each publication, I was told he wrote, read drafts, and made notes on the sides of pages every night before going to bed. To see him still continue editing after final form—the printed book—boggles my mind. He was constantly wanting to improve. He was that type of man.