New Perspectives on Filipino Textile Weaving

There is a long and rich tradition of textile weaving in the Philippines. In October 2022 Dr Ana Labrador, currently Honorary Senior Fellow at the Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation, gave a talk exploring different approaches to Filipino weaving practices and the challenges that they pose for conservators and for craft researchers. Her wideranging talk highlighted the gender dimensions of this topic, as well as the vital importance of acknowledging the individual people and communities involved in the production of tangible and intangible heritage. Current Conservation student Genevieve Schiesser reports and reflects on Dr Labrador’s lecture below.

Modern-day conservators seek to protect and facilitate the retention of both tangible and intangible heritage. As professionals closely involved with the communities they serve, conservators make decisions that affect not just objects but people and place. Conservators also work in three different timeframes: the past, the present and the future. Every object is intrinsically linked not just with its origin but with current and future communities. Without an awareness of this, it is difficult to fully understand the importance of heritage for a community.

Consider the famous philosophical debate on the Ship of Theseus, as recorded by Plutarch. The Ship of Theseus exists in the past as the vessel itself and its original materials. Over time, the ship is repaired and its material components are replaced entirely. Is it still the Ship of Theseus now, or is it something else? And what might it be in the future?

Considering heritage in all its multiplicity is key to the decisions conservators are required to make regarding the care and protection of cultural materials. Ana Labrador is keenly aware of the responsibility that this comes with and detailed it thoroughly and deeply in her presentation on Filipino textile weaving.

But first, what is involved in Filipino textile weaving?

Textile weaving is a long-held tradition in the Philippines and is significant to its communities. The textiles produced differ between regions depending on the materials available and can be woven from fibres derived from pineapple, cotton, abaca, silk and bark. This weaving primarily takes place on a handloom and produces garments, shrouds, wrappings, uniforms and symbols.

Filipino textile weaving tangibly affects how communities present and express themselves. The craft also has its intangible impacts, too. Filipino-made textiles satisfy the requirements of the country’s trade market economy, providing money to households and educating men and women in mathematical problem solving. Filipino textile craft also holds a spiritual significance, informs folklore and directly involves communities in the materials and practices of their local, regional and national cultures.

Conserving the Past

Firstly, a conservator must reckon with the past. For Filipino textile weaving, this involves consideration of the relationship between gender roles and craft in history. It is easy to associate women and femininity with textiles and fashion. As a result, this area of craft has become characterised by a sharp gender divide between men and women. While having discussions about gender inequality and division is undoubtedly necessary and important to a wide range of fields, Labrador provides a nuanced take on traditional Filipino weaving that complicates the role that gender plays here.

Ana Labrador’s first research on this topic involved documenting the gendered division of labour in Bontok during the 1990s. One of her key findings, however, was the fact that men were also sometimes involved in weaving. Weaving was a commodity skill that brought money to family units through the trade and sale of garments and some men would partake in weaving out of economic necessity. Donald Padsing, son of Filipino weaver Fantek Padsing, for instance, took up weaving to pay for university, defying the common stereotype of weaving as an ‘effeminate’ activity.

Textile weaving is also a practice through which women and men have traditionally learned a whole range of valuable life skills, including algebra, problem solving, symmetry, innovation, and balance. This is an often-unrecognised aspect of local craft and trade practices. There has been a tendency to devalue knowledge that is passed on through oral transmission and hands-on practice, despite the fact that as far back as the late 1970s, scholars were showing that there was in fact nothing to support the idea that institutionally taught knowledge was superior to locally, trade-taught knowledge (Reeve & Lave 1979).

In her talk, Dr Labrador reflected on how recognising textile weaving as a versatile skill can help us understand how textiles have bound and continue to bind communities and nations, rather than simply serving to divide people along gender lines. Lorno Kaino’s Necessity of Craft (1995) was a formative text for Labrador, who said it made her become aware of the importance of identifying makers of craft beyond the limitations of their gender or group.

Addressing Vulnerabilities in the Present

The traditional practice of weaving in the Philippines is highly vulnerable in its present state. In order to grasp why this is the case, a brief look at the history of conservation is in order.

Conservation as a practice still bears the hallmarks of its colonial origins. It first gained popularity in the late nineteenth century and soon became grafted to institutions through the idea that cultures and their materials must be documented for posterity, written down and archived according to an alphabetical format. The resulting hierarchy of cultural objects led to the devaluing and, ultimately, the disintegration of many traditional forms, practices and mnemonics.

Intangible practices of communities, such as the knowledge, memory and skill involved in Indigenous practices such as textile weaving, were not immediately translatable into the written word and therefore were generally not recorded or recognised. Where these practices did receive attention from conservators, it was the tangible output of these practices, such as the textiles themselves, that were prioritised in the record.

Meanwhile, the individual weavers and their communities were forgotten. In this process, the voice was severed from the object, and the nature of the object as a material with more than aesthetic meaning was lost.

Even when a cultural practice is recorded, it is forced to conform to the written language and, therefore, important details of the traditions associated with that practice may be lost.

Consider, for example, the case of Filipino weaver Khayapan (Carolina Yawan), who has tattooed her arms with mnemonic designs to assist with different weaving patterns. Khayapan’s mnemonic patterns constitute a system of language in their own right and yet the fact that they do not translate well into the Latin alphabet means that elements of Khayapan’s technique may be at risk of being lost. Her mnemonic patterns may be misrecorded during the documentation process or may simply be deemed as too difficult to be studied at all.

All too often, this preference for material objects and for tangibility means that practices, techniques and skills which cannot easily be displayed in a case or translated into written form fall by the wayside. Furthermore, the names of the individual actors involved are not acknowledged. Over time, the practices and the rituals associated with Filipino textile weaving are at risk of being lost because their protection and conservation has not been made a priority.

What is most important right now, Labrador says, is the continuation and study of the practice itself. It is an illusion that it is harder to protect intangible processes – it is only an understudied area of research that requires proper attention so that we can get it right. Labrador places emphasis on the fact that a huge part of getting it right is to put names and faces to the objects and collections we see displayed at museums and galleries. We must remember and visualise these people as active participants in the space that is created.

Looking to the Future

The future is where we have the chance to succeed in ‘getting it right’, and a crucial part of that future lies in craft research and advocacy. There is huge transformative potential in craft research, including perhaps most importantly for the promotion and protection of Indigenous knowledge that is little documented and can be shown most tangibly through the objects themselves.

Craft research can also help to educate the public about sustainability and the resources required to continue producing textiles or about little-known technologies, such as those used in traditional looms. All this is multidisciplinary, involving botany, earth sciences, economics, history, anthropology and many more fields of knowledge.

Such work is already happening. Ana Labrador has been involved in the creation of a permanent textile exhibition dedicated to weaving knowledge, Hibla ng Laging Filipino: The Artistry of Philippine Textiles, at the National Museum of the Philippines in Manila.

Onward We Go

For the student conservators who had the privilege of learning from Ana Labrador, she offered an inspiring role model for how to approach heritage that is owned by other peoples and communities Labrador spoke with particular eloquence about Indigenous weaving. Her discussion of Filipino textile weaving drew out beautifully the complexity that is found in intangible Indigenous practices. The care and thoughtfulness that she brings to her research and her proactivity in research and advocacy, offered the audience a compelling example to follow. Aspiring conservators will look to this example for guidance in studying Indigenous practices of all kinds, for we must commit to what conservators could not in the past.

Suggestions for further reading:

• Kaino, L. (ed.) 1995. The Necessity of Craft, UWA Publishing.

• Labrador, A. P. 2016. Hibla ng Lahing Filipino: The Artistry of Philippine Textiles. Exhibition catalogue. 2nd edition. National Museum and the Office of Senator Loren Legarda, Manila.

• SEAMO SPAFA-QSMT 2019. Our Ancestors Knew Best: Traditional Southeast Asian Textile Treatments and their Place in Modern Conservation. Julia M. Brennan and Linh Anh Moreau eds.,SEAMO SPAFA-QSMT, Thailand.

• Stallybrass, P. 1998. ‘Marx’s Coat’. In Border Fetishisms. 1st Edition. Routledge.

• Tarlo, E. 2010. Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith, Bloomsbury Publishing.

• UNESCO, China National Silk Museum 2022. Textiles and Clothing Along the Silk Roads. Feng Zhao and Marie-Louise Nosch eds., UNESCO/China National Silk Museum, France/China.

References:

• Reeve, H. J. & Lave, J. 1979, ‘Arithmetic as a Tool for Investigating Relations between Culture and Cognition.’ American Ethnologist 6, 568–582. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1979.6.3.02a00100

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to Dr Ana Labrador for taking the time to present on Filipino textile-making at the Grimwade Centre. I extend these thanks to Dr Labrador for also raising awareness about the weavers with whom she has worked; because it is imperative to be reading and speaking these names, I give special mention to all those who are presented in Labrador’s talk and with whom she has worked:

• Khayapan (Carolina) Yawan (d. 2014), Bontok weaver
• Yabing Dulo (1914–2021), Blaan weaver and Manlilikha ng Bayan (National Living Treasure). More on Yabing Dulo can be found in this article on Noli Soli.
• Fantek Padsing, (d. 2011) Bontok weaver
• Donald Padsing, Bontok weaver and NGO worker
• Anna India De la Cruz Legaspi, Kalibo-based Akeanon piña (pineapple) weaver
• Sentrong Pagpapalakas ng Negritong Kultura at Kalikasan (SPNKK) – an umbrella group of all Negrito Filipinos

I would like to also acknowledge and thank Dr Nicole Tse for organising and recording Dr Labrador’s presentation.

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Feature image: Late Ifontok weaver Fantek Padsing who passed away in 2011, photographed in 2006. Ana Labrador writes: “When I took this photo in 1996 during field research, she was demonstrating to me not only her expertise in weaving on the backstrap loom but also how she preferred to do it in reverse to make sure that the completed fabric would be as cleanly finished in the front as in the back. Nuanced details like that are only possible through establishing relationships in the community and gaining members’ trust through respect, plus having the wits to document as much as possible.”