Cultural treasure trove

Collectors build appreciation for furniture and decorative arts from the Philippines

Just when you feared Filipino interior decor consisted primarily of giant teak forks and spoons on the wall, Tim Los Banos comes along with a house full of Filipino furnishings that rival the best in native crafts anywhere in the world. And his house isn't nearly big enough to contain it all.

Centennial celebration The first Filipino contract workers -- "sakadas" -- landed in Hawaii on Dec. 20, 1906. Filipino groups in the islands will be commemorating the centennial next year, although the official opening will take place this December. Stay tuned for event announcements. For more information, check out http://www. filipinosinhawaii100.org

"Look at this," marveled Los Banos, rubbing his hand over a gleaming, gorgeous table of carved wood as if it were lost treasure, with his friend and fellow collector Ray Abregano -- both are English teachers at Saint Louis School. "This is made of a single plank of 'narra' wood, carved about 1906. The Philippines government has put a moratorium on this wood; you can't get it. But this thing escaped. The family shipped possessions out when they sensed war was coming, and this table has been in storage in Northern California since 1940. I heard about it, tracked it down, and now I've got it and will preserve it."

OK, maybe it is like hunting treasure, with a bit of a boost from eBay and an awakening interest in ethnic galleries in New York and London. But for young Filipinos like Los Banos and Abregano, it's also a matter of reforging a cultural identity.

"Yes, Tim is a very educated, proud and profound Filipino," said Abregano. "He certainly has cultural pride in his ethnicity."

Where do you start? Although the Philippines has a land area about the size of Arizona, it is an archipelago comprising more than 7,000 islands, 88 million people, dozens of religious, ethnic and political groups, plus a colonial history of Spanish, American and Japanese influences. And you thought Hawaii was a crossroads.

Is there a standardized school of Filipino decor, or does the polyglot nature of the nation define its cultural imperative? What will remain of Filipino native culture when it becomes assimilated into the West, other than a preoccupation with beauty pageants?

"Yeah, what is it with Filipinos and beauty pageants?" wondered Abregano.

"Probably a native love of festivals, a Catholic love of pageantry and an adoration of good old American Hollywood kitsch," mused Los Banos.

JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARBULLETIN.COM The statue of the Holy Mary is made of ivory and is more than 200 years old.

LIKE MANY Filipino Americans -- he's fifth-generation -- Los Banos' ancestors left the islands to become Americans and rarely looked back. His father was a career Air Force officer, and he grew up in military housing around the world. He says his siblings have "little or no connection" to native Filipino decorative crafts. Not many in Hawaii do, he said. It's worth noting during this latest centennial of Filipino emigration to Hawaii, what we think of as Filipino has spent a hundred years evolving separately from the home islands.

It was in fifth grade, when Los Banos was assigned a school project on "your culture," that a spark of awareness flickered. "My mom had a book on Filipino cooking, and it had lots of pictures of food but I started looking at the furniture the food was displayed on. I had never seen anything like that."

Naturally, Los Banos has some carved carabao in his collection. "It's such a symbol of the culture."

But what's the big metal jar?

"It's a 'gador' container, from the Lanaw region of Mindanao," explained Los Banos. "It's bronze, made of an intricate lost-wax process, with silver inlay, a really good example of Filipino metal-smithing. They're hard to get because of the al-Qaida cells operating on Mindanao. Antique dealers call them food containers, but they're really status symbols. Food stored in a bronze jar wouldn't taste too good, either!"

Los Banos expanded on the theme of misidentification. Filipino crafts are often labeled as Mexican, for example, and Filipinos emigrating since the war -- often escaping the Marcos regime -- tended to leave bulky items behind. Marcos himself didn't bring any narra tables with him when he fled to Hawaii.

"Because of that, when things show up, they tend to be very affordable. Like betel-nut boxes, usually made of silver. Every classy home had one. Narra wood furniture, which can be mistaken for koa. Shower-tree wood, called 'tindalo,' has a gorgeous rosy hue. 'Kamagong' is ebony wood. The furniture has detail that is so sophisticated for a culture that is often misunderstood."

JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARBULLETIN.COM On a Philippines-made table of Narra wood, collector Tim Los Banos' hand differentiates the colors of "male" and "female" Narra.

ANOTHER GIVEAWAY, and another reason such crafts are often identified as Mexican, is the close identification with Catholicism. In his collection, Los Banos has items as pedestrian as carved-wood cookie molds that press out images of saints, to purely religious icons of the saints.

Often, the small painted-wood representations of saints are missing the carved ivory head or hands. "Well! Sometimes the pieces have miraculous cures attached to them, and they are kept as talismans," said Los Banos. "Or they're just stolen because they're ivory."

We could go on and on because Los Banos has drawers full of such stuff, all of it pretty cool and highly decorative.

"OK, so I'm obsessive-compulsive," he laughs, "but it's kind of exciting exploring these links to my cultural heritage, particularly since it's still pretty unknown. We're just feeling our way."

JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARBULLETIN.COM Framed in the reflection of an antique mirror made of Narra wood, Tim Los Banos holds one of his Santo statues amidst others in his collection, some more than 200 years old.