Featured image: UP, UP, AND AWAY A sample of a First Flight to the Moon membership card

His card number was 11, handed personally to him with a promise that he would be on the first flight to the moon by then US President Richard Nixon during his visit to Manila in July 1969.

Like doctors, archaeologists have specializations. Mine is earthenware pottery, specifically decorated earthenware pottery. I only stumbled upon my specialization. I was attending my first international archaeological conference in Taiwan in 2002, the Indo-Pacific Prehistoric Association or IPPA, which aims to “promote cooperation in the study of prehistory and related subjects in the Indo-Pacific region.”

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND A newspaper clipping of a young PBBM being given a First Moon Flights Club membership card, the 11th issued by Pan Am

One area of study that has remained strong in the IPPA is pottery. Along with its manufacture, technology, trade, and use in social activities among others, pottery can tell us a lot about the people in the past and how we are related through contact and trade. I was intrigued. I began attending all of the sessions on pottery and soon decided to specialize in the analysis of decoration on earthenware pots. Not only did I find the topic interesting, I also realized a lot of the pottery, at least the ones presented at the conference, were recovered in caves, which I thought then were a godsend, given the tropical climate in the Philippines. In subsequent digs, I found out that other slithering and crawling creatures thought the same as well!

FROM A PRESIDENT TO A FUTURE PRESIDENT US President Richard Nixon personally handing the young Ferdinand Marcos Jr. his membership card during his visit in July 1969

Pottery is a hardy material. Even in broken form, it can withstand the test of time. According to Clive Orton, Pault Tyers, and Alan Vince in their book Pottery in Archaeology, archaeologists who specialize in pottery find they can use pottery for the purpose of dating. They can have a pot dated, for example, and use the information to help date other materials found alongside it, such as distribution patterns via migration or trade and also use it as evidence in determining function and status. You also can add the implication on the manufacture and technology of the pot, which infer behavioral practices in the past.

I have analyzed over a hundred thousand pottery sherds and may know how the pots were decorated but ironically, I have never made a pot myself. I decided to change all that by looking for a pottery studio to take lessons from.

POTTERS Happy students with their finished products

In a previous article I talked about the not-so-secret barangay of Poblacion, the cultural and heritage barangay of Makati. The barangay was established as San Pedro Macati in 1670. The land yielded an abundance of clay and when it was donated to the Jesuits by Capitan Pedro de Brito and his wife, Ana de Herrera, the Jesuits started manufacturing pottery that “netted them ₱30,000 a year.” In the mid-1700s, there was a move to curtail the growing power and influence of the Jesuits around the world. By Royal decree in 1767, the order was expelled from the Philippines. All Jesuit lands, as a result of the decree, was returned to the crown. The land was acquired by Don Jose Bonifacio Roxas, one of the men who brought the Roxas-Ayala-Zobel clan into prominence. The Ayala’s Hacienda de San Pedro Makati was 2,986 hectares.

A POTTER'S HANDS Pottery making using the wheel

The area we now call Poblacion was the site of a number of pottery factories and kiln sites, where they would “bake” or fire the pottery. Between the 16th and early 19th centuries AD, a particular pottery called Manila Ware was manufactured. According to the Father of Philippine Anthropology, American Dr. Otley Bayer (1883-1966), Manila Ware was “a fine and hard bodied terracotta, or semi stoneware pottery with an unusual buff red or brown clay matrix.” In 1931, Dr. Bayer excavated along the Pasig River and discovered two Manila Ware kiln sites in Poblacion. Manila Ware was known to copy European style plates, bowls, jars, and goblets. It was also said to be traded along with other goods through the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade (1565-1815).

RARE BEAUTY Korean Moon Jar popular during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) Photo from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Today, there is only one pottery manufacturing “site” in Poblacion. It’s called Pottery Sessions, owned by Catherine Choachuy. Located along R. Palma Street, it is spacious, light, and airy and it boasts of an electric kiln. It has a shop, where different ceramic artists are featured, a lecture room, two work areas, and a drying room, where the kiln is located. In the past, according to Catherine, porcelain was used to produce pottery in the Philippines. I tried to jog my memory when porcelain was produced in the country. Firing porcelain requires technology that was not present in the Philippines until the later Spanish era to early 19th century since it involves maintaining consistent high temperature levels ranging from 1200 to 1350 degrees Celsius. Although we now know we have sources of kaolin or soft white clay, an essential ingredient in porcelain, what we do have is said to be not as pure as those found in China, which is why our porcelain products are less than luminous. What you want in quality porcelain is translucency similar to that of the moon.

ART VESSELS Featured works of pottery artisans

On the topic of vessels and the moon, the traditional moon jars created using Korean white porcelain became popular in Korea in the late 1600s when understated elegance was the aesthetics. These pale, orblike pots that resemble the moon are made from two halves joined together, their upper and lower ends joined in the middle, the seam made smooth but just enough to show where the halves are joined. The mouth of a moon jar is wider than the diameter of its bottom. Imperfection and irregularities are highlighted just as much for the vessel’s decorative beauty. In this social media-driven world, it’s always good to be reminded that being imperfect is OK too. During the Joseon Period (1392-1910), the vessels were used both for decorative and functional purposes.

Speaking of the moon, during my work sorting photos and other memorabilia in the old home of my uncle and aunt, I came across a newspaper clipping of the now President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos. In the early 1960s, an Austrian named Gernhart Pistor went to a travel agency to see if he could reserve a flight to the moon. The agency forwarded the request to Pan American Airways, Inc. or Pan Am, then known for having the most advanced fleet of aircrafts flying to every continent in the world, “except Antarctica.” Pan Am accepted and started taking reservations for a 2000 launch. This became so popular and membership cards were issued, of which 100,000 cards were printed. Thousands more were wait-listed. PBBM was the first Filipino to receive a First Moon Flights Club membership card. His card number was 11, handed personally to him with a promise that he would be on the first flight to the moon by then US President Richard Nixon during his visit to Manila in July 1969.