Legarda: Mat and Basket Weavers from Laguna Featured at the National Museum

This October, Senator Loren Legarda and the National Museum invite everyone to witness demonstrations of basket and mat weavers from the Southern Tagalog and Bicol Regions as they showcase their techniques at the National Museum of Anthropology every Friday and Saturday of the month.

The first weaving demonstration starts on October 2 and 3, featuring Rosalie Rondilla, Rosalina Oblepias, Asteria Balasabas, and Guadalupe Acedo, all from Luisiana, Laguna, who will showcase pandan weaving, a specialty of their community.

“The creation of each pandan basket or mat is a tedious but rewarding process. Its production involves the community. These weaving demonstrations will help us understand what goes behind each handicraft in order to appreciate it better,” Legarda stated.

The weaving demonstrations can be viewed from 10:00 am to 12:00 nn and 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm at the Reception Room, 4th Floor, National Museum of Anthropology (formerly Museum of the Filipino People), Old Finance Building, Rizal Park, Manila.

In the succeeding weeks, mat and basket weavers from Quezon (October 9 and 10), Albay (October 16 and 17), and Sorsogon (October 23 and 24) will be the featured weaving demonstrators.

Legarda also encouraged visitors of the museum to go to the various galleries—the Hibla ng Lahing Filipino textile gallery, Baybayin gallery, and the Rice, Biodiversity and Climate Change exhibit—all of which were joint projects of Legarda and the National Museum.

Last July, mat and basket weavers from the MIMAROPA Region showcased their weaving techniques. In 2014, textile weavers from the Cordillera Region, Panay island, and Mindanao featured their weaving traditions at the National Museum.

Legarda and the National Museum also organized a lecture series on Philippine Traditional Textiles and Indigenous Knowledge that started in 2012, which included lectures from (1) Dr. Maria Stanyukovich of Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in Russia; (2) Dr. Lynne Milgram of Ontario College in Toronto; (3) Dr. Patcharawee Tunprawat, a specialist in Cultural Heritage Management based in Bangkok; (4) Hoang Thi To Quyen and Nguyen Thi Tuan Linh of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology; (5) Sonja Garcia, along with members of the Tudaya School of Living Tradition of the Bagobo Tagabawa Community who demonstrated weaving and making dyes from natural sources; and (6) lecturers/weavers from Lao PDR—Madame Keobounma Phetmalayvanh, Director-General of the Lao National Museum, Master Weaver Nanthavongdouangsy Kongthong, and Madame Keomoungkhoun Chansamone.