Lovely Lucban

The Trip to Lucban

It was the 11th of March 2006 at around 3:45 in the morning. I, together with a friend, was set and very excited to start our adventure trip to Lucban, a beautiful town in the province of Quezon. We sleepily clambered up a bus at one of the bus terminals in Cubao. Since it was still wee hours of the morning and that the travel was a bit long, we decided to sleep all throughout the travel and recover many lost hours of sleep (the day was after my final finals week in UP).

After a two-hour travel, we were finally in Lucban. Climbing down the bus, we were welcomed by the cool fresh breeze that I rarely, or never, experienced in Manila. Lucban is quietly settled at the foot of the grand Mt. Banahaw which is towering 1, 875 meters above sea level. Lucban is situated at the northwestern border of Quezon Province with geographical coordinates of 12º33' East longitude and 14º7' North latitude. Lying on a slope Northeast of Mt. Banahaw, the town stands at an elevation of 1, 500 feet above sea level.

Lucban is 160 kilometers from Metro Manila via Lucena, the provincial capital of Quezon and 133 kilometers or roughly three-and-a-half hour bus ride via Sta. Cruz-Pagsanjan route and can easily be reached by public transportation.





Lucban, Pahiyas, Longganisa, and the Buntal Hat

Lucban is very famous for its annual Pahiyas festival in honor of their patron Saint Isidore the farmer. It is also well known for the tasty Lucban longganisa which is sold at almost every street in the town. Little did i know that the known has more to boast for. It's people are exceptionally warm, the environment is extraordinarily clean, and another particular tradition continues to thrive: the buntal hat weaving. And with that I marveled at how these people preserve their tradition inspite the problems the modern world poses.

Tracking buntal hat weavers in Lucban was not difficult. There were many traditional shops in the town where one could ask for information. I went to a shop near the church where I met Nanay Lorena, the shopkeeper, whom I asked about buntal hats. She replied with words I could hardly say, much more understand: sambalilo and maglalala. Strange they may seem, the former is the local word for sombrero, and the latter is local for buntal hat weaving. She gave me the address of a lady who she personally knew.

Meeting the Traditional Artists

Nanay Tita lives in A. dela Cruz Street, one of Lucban's narrow streets that are outlined by closely built houses which look more like facades in city alleys and very unusual for a provincial town. Upon my arrival, I was greeted by her warm smile and delightful hospitality. She just came from a neighbor's house for her usual Sunday morning chats with her kumares. One of them was Nanay Letty who also came with her to meet the unexpected visitor.

A continuing heritage

Nanay Tita Elloso is 61 years old and is married to a farmer. She has four children, all of whom are already married. The oldest daughter now lives in Manila where she works as a midwife in a hospital. Her other married children and her granddaughters live with her.

Nanay Tita started weaving buntal hats when she was 12 years old. As far as she could remember, her great grandmother was also a buntal hat weaver. The skill was eventually passed on to her through her mother who learned it from the grandmother. Buntal weaving in the family is like a legacy bequeathed from one generation to the next, from mother to daughter. She has not finished any degree in college but is somehow content with her job as a full time weaver like her mother. But the present generation of the family - her daughters and granddaughters - are not keen on pursuing the tradition. What they desire is to finish a degree and get a job in Manila. The handicraft, for her, is becoming a family heritage abandoned, with she being the last in line. How much often she recounted to me her disappointment.

Nanay Letty Iglesia, Nanay Tita's long-time neighbor, kumare, and fellow buntal weaver, is 48 years old, also married to a farmer, and has 4 sons. She started weaving when she was in grade school, though she can no longer remember her exact age then. What she remembers is that she used to observe her mother do buntal hats at home as a child, until she finally became interested and decided to learn and continue her mother's trade. But unlike Nanay Tita, she works as a laundry woman aside from being a weaver. That she jokingly told me that she's a labandera by day, and a buntal weaver by night. Unfortunately, she has no one to teach in her children as she doesn't have daughters. Her granddaughters, despite her desire to teach them, are in no way interested to weave. What they want is to study. This gave her the same disappointment as Nanay Tita.

My arrival in Nanay Tita's house (by the way, I am with a friend whom I pestered to accompany me), spurred the attention of other neighbors who were taking their usual Sunday morning siesta. Little did I know that when I was talking to the two women, several others came in - children from the streets, some men who just wanted to get involved, and, to my delight, other women who are weavers and kiping makers or matikikiping as the locals would call. These women were present the entire time I was there and also shared their ideas.

Buntal hat weaving is a very common activity among women - mothers and grandmothers- in Lucban. These women do the weaving at home alone or with their kumares in the neighborhood during their usual chikahan sessions, as Nanay Tita confessed. These women, like my generous respondents, also learned the skill from their mothers. They do it as their primary job, or as a supplementary money-earning activity.

The buntal fiber as raw material

The main material used for the handicraft is the buntal fiber derived from the buri palm. Endemic to the Philippines, the buri (Corypha elata roxb) is considered as the largest palm in the islands and can grow to up to 20 to 40 meters in height. It has a characteristic large, fan-shaped leaves and stout petioles ranging from two to three meters in length. Its trunk can grow up to 1.5 meters in girth.

Buntal fibers are cylindrical in shape and are extracted from the petioles or palaya of the palm by retting or pulling. These fibers are exported from the nearby town of Siriaya, a known buri fiber production center, and sold in Lucban at P30 per bundle, a quantity enough to make one hat. The buntal fiber is also used for as the raw material for baskets, loom weaving, and in various items as shoes, slippers, coin purses, pen holders, window blinds, wall papers, screen dividers, desk organizers, etc.

Other types of fibers obtained from the buri palm are the raffia, which composes about 90% of fibers derived from the palm and is extracted from the young shoot or leaf, and the buri, which is from the matured leaf. The buri type of fiber is used for making hats, placemats, and bags. Raffia fibers are perfect for upholstery, shoes, slippers, tying materials, portfolio, and a lot more.
Fibers from buri palm are durable, amenable, and long-lasting, making them as one of the most important fibers in handicraft industries. And interestingly enough, not a single part of the palm, much like the closely related coconut tree, is laid to waste. Elegant furniture can be made from the midribs of the palm, fermented toddy from the sap, edible starch from the trunk, "ubud" from the bud, and rosary beads or buttons from hard seeds. The palm is also cultivated in other countries as Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Madagascar.

The buntal fiber bought in Lucban are already extracted and bundled by producers in Siriaya. The process of extraction, as the women recounted, is tedious and manual. Some machines are available, but according to them those done through the traditional means are a lot better. The fibers are pulled (hinuhugit) from the petioles of the palm, dried, and bleached. These then sorted out according to fiber size, bundled, and delivered to other towns.

The fibers that are bought in Lucban are yet to be subjected to a selection process before they are woven. The women themselves, using a certain crude implement, further segregate the fibers, a process called pag-iilo. The fine fibers, called pino, are used for the initial phases of weaving that will from the simula, while the coarser fibers, called the bastos, are used to weave the remaining part of the hat or the dahon.

The process of buntal weaving

Paglalala, or buntal hat weaving, is a home-based industry, transmitted from generation to generation, and labor intensive as it requires simple and crude tools. Only women weave, while men are involved mainly in making the implements and in the upstream process of fiber extraction and preparation.

The women describe the weaving process as salin-salin. Using the pino or fine fibers, the tuktok of the hat is made. In order to create a round, flat layer of weaved fiber, a wooden implement called ipitan is used that clips and holds steady the fibers while the first layers of the tucktok are being weaved. After weaving a disc with a diameter of more than 5 '/2 inches, the woven fibers are then transferred into a hulmahan or mold, a cylindrical wooden implement that forms the ulo of hat. Weaving then proceeds by following the shape of the mold until the height of 4 1/2 inches. Then the dahon is weaved using the coarse fibers. It is about 5 '/4 inches in length. These measurements are standard and followed by all the weavers in the area.

An essential part of making the buntal hat is the creation of the butas. These are designs applied to the ulo of the hat. Weavers have their own original designs and these can be outlines of different shapes created by particular patterns of weaving. Nanay Tita, for instance, applies small round designs which she learned from her mother. Nanay Letty, on the other hand, makes use of larger round designs. The finished product is ironed to flatten the dahon and trimmed to remove any excess fiber.

An essential part of making the buntal hat is the creation of the butas. I was amazed by the skill of Nanay Tita and Nanay Letty who both demonstrated the weaving process while I was interviewing them. Interestingly, their fingers have acquired the dexterity which made the weaving seem a second nature for them. With their distinctive Southern Tagalong accent, they spoke and laughed with me as they did the handicraft to which their fingers have accustomed. But Nanay Tita, complaining that she was old already, committed a single mistake that deformed the hat she was doing. Patiently, she unweaved the fiber and repeated the process from the point she made the mistake.

The buntal hat is sold in traditional shops found at almost every street in the town. Buntal hats delivered to these shops are painted with various colors and added with different designs. These hats are also exported.

Buntal weaving as business

Traditional art forms are created for the service of life. However, the buntal hats in Lucban may not seem to qualify as such since these hats are made mainly for business nowadays.

Buntal hat production involves contract labor arrangements or subcontracting arrangements where women weavers are provided with fibers for production and paid for each hat that they produced. The investors, called namumuhunan, pay them P120 for each hat the produce. Nanay Letty can finish one hat in 3 to 4 days, while Nanay Tita, who weaves full-time, can finish one in two days.

Still, the money they earn is not enough to make their daily ends meet. Nanay Tita relied heavily on his husband's farm produce to finance the education of their children while her wages from buntal weaving are only supplementary. Nanay Letty works full time as a laundry woman and weaves only during the night. His husband is also a farmer.

The buntal hat as a traditional art form

Buntal weaving started in Baliuag, Bulacan before World War II. In Lucban, the people claim their sambalilo as their very own and, along with the famous Pahiyas, is a symbol of their town's identity.

Today, buntal hat weaving continues to thrive as a traditional activity in the town, though most women, if not all, do it mainly for motives of wages. In a contractual arrangement where each one is paid according to the number of hats produced, women are left with no opportunities for creativity as what the system resembles is an assembly line were productivity is measured in terms of quantity, not quality.

Nanay Tita and Nanay Letty have each been producing identical hats far a long time, and have not changed the design of the butas which would create uniqueness of the product. It is in the shops where their woven hats are painted and adorned with ribbons and laces.

But personally, I still like the plain buntal hat that truly reveals the ingenuity and intricateness of the handicraft and its creators.

Coda

Buntal hat weaving remains as a traditional activity among some women in Lucban. However, it faces a formidable danger of being forgotten as the younger generation chooses not to learn the craft and as commercialization of the product prevents the women from exercising creativity in their work.

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I wrote this paper last year for my Fine Arts 28 class which is on Philippine Art Appreciation under Sir Dodo Defeo.