M.G. REYES gives us a crash course on how to see the value in wooden artworks.
An artifact has to be a hundred years old to qualify as an “antique.”
That is what the law says-Republic Act 10066 to be exact. RA 10066, also known as The National Cultural Heritage Act of 2009 expands the provisions of Presidential Decree 37 4 signed by President Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1973.
RA 10066 defines “antique” as a cultural property found locally which is 100 years in age, more or less, the production of which has ceased.
“Cultural property” refers to “products of human creativity” from paper weights to books, maps, pottery, furniture, houses, churches, mosques, schools, natural history specimens and sites, whether public or privately owned, moveable or immoveable and tangible or intangible.
Here in the Philippines, the National Museum is tasked to oversee and protect our cultural heritage. For example, the antique collector interested in verifying the authenticity of a porcelain tea pot from China should go to the Cultural Properties Division. This office also issues permits to operate an antique shop and permits to export. To the individual collector, the permit to export simply means the right to take a cultural property out of the country.
Cultural properties classified as “important” will not be allowed to leave the country unless otherwise declared by the proper government agency. Section 5 of RA 10066 classifies the following as “important cultural properties,” works by a National Artist; works by National Heroes; archaeological and traditional ethnographic materials; marked structures; archival material or document dating at least 50 years old; and structures dating back at least 50 years.
So if you are an expat or a visiting balikbayan and someone offers you an H.R. Ocampo nude or a gold necklace from a shipwrecked galleon off Batangas, it would be good to ask, “Would I be allowed to take it with me?”
Ordinary collectors like us are not likely to be confronted by such a situation. The real question at the back of our minds is: how much is it actually worth?
Dr. Gerard Salgado of Jo-Liza Antiques lists three things that affect the value of an antique apatt from age:
Quality or condition: Are there any missing parts-like a piece of bone inlay? How much restoration is involved?
History or provenance: Where was it found or made? Who owned or used it before? An antique inkwell is just another antique inkwell unless it was used by General Emilio Aguinaldo to sign the Pact of Biak-na-Bato.
Rarity: How many more of this antique piece is out there?
There is a wealth of antique furniture in the Philippines that are unabashedly adaptations of European models, However, there are two that are distinctly Filipino in function: the mesa altar and the gallinera.
The term gallinera is derived from gallo, the Spanish word meaning “cock” and it refers to the wooden bench with a slatted bottom half designed to keep the guest’s fighting cock tucked safely under.
The mesa altar is a made-to-order high table that the upper middle class Filipino family used as their altar at home, It is made from Philippine hardwood like narra, kamagong, molave or batikulin.
The mesa altar is usually adorned with “bone inlay;· an exquisite but difficult decorative craft that flourished in France, Italy and Holland during the 16th and 17th centuries, “Bone inlay” is wood inlaid with tortoise shell, mother-of-pearl or ivory. In the Philippines where there are no more elephants, the artisans sensibly substituted carabao horns for ivory.
Two towns are well-known for their fine bone inlay furniture: Baliuag in Bulacan province and Peñaranda in Nueva Ecija..Baliuag bone inlay is elegant in its restraint. It is less floral, more linear, more Asian in its treatment of space. The Peñaranda bone inlay is the opposite. It is..well, more abandoned with its profusion of floral patterns and leaves fenced in by geometric shapes.
Danny Flores stands by one of the masterpieces of his late father Juan C. Flores, who is considered the "Dean of Philippine Woodcarving."
One can find genuine antiques – affordable and otherwise – in reputable antique shops in Metro Manila. There are also the antique shops on Calle Crisologo in Vigan that reportedly sell bone inlay furniture for as much as 30 percent less. A word of caution: not all items here are as antigo as claimed.
But who knows? One could be lucky-as some shoppers were-and chance upon a genuine find that given 20 more years will be certified “antique” by the National Museum.
