‘Demonyo tables’

Weeks ago I wrote about the overheated auction scene in Manila and the elegant Baliuag furniture made from Philippine hardwood ornamented with pleasing designs from carabao horn. I was surprised to hear that the most expensive piece of Philippine furniture on record is a 19th-century Baliuag cabinet that sold for P12 million (VAT and premium included). Everyone is now asking who was crazy enough to pay that much for an old second-hand cabinet, and how long it would take for Kim Henares of the Bureau of Internal Revenue to step in and spoil the fun.

Filipino furniture collectors have long been collecting pieces from the “the three Bs” (Bohol, Baliuag and Batangas), with the most expensive being the early pieces from Batangas that sell for at least P1 million, if you can find an authentic piece with little or no restoration. Come to think of it, one of the high points of Philippine cultural history is the development of the mesa altar or altar table in Batangas in the 17th century.

Early Spanish accounts of the Philippines note that there was very little furniture in Filipino dwellings. What did your ancestors use before the introduction of the chair? They sat on mats or their haunches. They ate off banana leaves or their hands, sometimes at a low hardwood table or dulang, which was eventually replaced by bigger, more elaborate pieces.

All this changed after three centuries of Spanish rule. Remember that almost all everyday terms used for Philippine furniture (muebles) are actually Spanish. A chair is a silya, merely respelled from the original silla, and a table is a mesa or the more complete la mesa. Terms for tableware—cuchara,  cucharita,  tenedor,  cuchillo,  baso,  tasa,  plato,  platito,  bandejado,  serbilyeta, etc.—are all Spanish because our ancestors ate, not with chopsticks, but with their hands (or kamayan).

Altar tables—even reproductions made today—carry a marked Chinese influence. The most distinctive design features were ball and claw feet and lion mask carvings that have since been referred to as “dimemonyo,” making simple antique dealers refer to this type of altar table as “demonyo (devil) table.” The early altar tables from Batangas were copied from or at least based on Ming dynasty altar tables. Even the special wood used for altar tables, Philippine rosewood, was the same kind of wood known as huang  hua  li  and prized by Chinese furniture makers. Over time the Chinese look remained, but the Batangas  mesa  altar  developed into a distinct prototype whose style was copied down south to Bicol, Mindoro, and even as far as Cebu.

Improving on the pioneering furniture research by Milagros Jamir and Martin Tinio, the historian Ramon Villegas, with Osmundo Esguerra, has discerned two periods in the history of Philippine furniture—the Age of Missions (1570-1770) and the Age of Haciendas that was further divided into two periods marked by the birth of Philippine nationalism (1770-1870) and its aftermath (1870-1970). Villegas notes that during the Age of Missions, the main patrons of Philippine furniture were the clergy and the bureaucrats who commissioned Chinese and Japanese artisans to fill their churches, convents, and offices with furniture that would be different from those for domestic use made in great numbers in the late 1770s. With the development of Philippine society, a new class of patrons not from the Church or Spanish bureaucracy spurred the development of domestic furniture.

The Batangas altar table, writes Villegas, “is basically a chest of drawers on tall legs. There are two basic forms: One is the kilo (bent or curved), the table with cabriole legs on stretchers with ogee feet; the other is the tuwid, the table with straight or tapering legs.” From extant pieces a workshop by an anonymous Batangas master furniture maker has been traced to the present San Pascual, Batangas. Stylistically, Batangas altar tables have been attributed to an anonymous artisan or workshop that has been described as: Batangas Master I, Batangas Master II, and Batangas Master III. The most reproduced altar tables are of the Batangas I variety, described by Villegas as follows:

“…They typically have cabriole feet resting on chamfered spheres (kalabasa or squash). Their flanges and aprons are characterized by asymmetric, spiky-leaf cutwork outlines, and flat, lacelike piercework (calado) and shallow carving. There is a sense of massiveness that is almost architectural. Outlining the drawers are exaggerated steps moulding in kamagong wood, which offset the delicate carving in the flanges and apron. The tabletop has a mitered frame with a floating panel secured by a traverse brace. Dentil moulding emphasizes the tabletop edge in front. The drawer housings have a bottom, a detail not found in 19th-century pieces.”

I’m not an expert in Philippine furniture, but I appreciate the development from rude utilitarian pieces worked on by Filipino artisans into distinct styles. Before World War II, altar tables from the simple to the elaborate Batangas I were common in Filipino homes for the display and veneration of the images of saints. Today, extant pieces are to be found only in museums or as treasured antiques in upper-class homes. How this furniture became popular and later obsolete is a part of our yet unwritten cultural history.

* * *

Comments are welcome at [email protected]