Sunday, April 22, 2007 Gilded flora & fauna By Mayette Q. Tabada
LAMBENT comes to mind when gazing at a product by Amarcas.
Its signature golden liquidity recalls amber-like qualities preserving an astonishing variety of indigenous materials often ignored or left to decompose.
Tobacco leaves going up in smoke as hand-rolled poor man’s cigars?
At Amarcas, tobacco leaves overlay the cigar box, complete with the presidential seal embossed in 24 K gold, which was exclusively commissioned by former President Fidel V. Ramos as giveaways on his official trips abroad.
And the mustard leaves, ipil-ipil pods and mansanitas leaves that are fodder for bonfires, as well as the banana bark and fish scales that end up in swine slop?
Transformed by Amarcas, garden and kitchen detritus become Faberge eggs, jewelry boxes, picture frames and fanciful accessories.
The art of making the functional ornamental, as well as vice versa, has been perfected by Amarcas in almost 18 years of designing, manufacturing and exporting its products from the factory and showroom located in the 4,200-square meter family compound located at the center of Mandaue City.
In 1989, Angeles Amatong Sanchez partnered with daughter Maris Araneta to cash in on the wave of demand for indigenous wearable art.
The matriarch baptized what she envisioned to be a family enterprise by putting together the first letters of the names of the couple and their children: Artemio, Maris, Angeles, Raul, Clarence and Artemio Jr. Sanchez.
The name was prophetic. When Maris decided to focus on the Araneta family business, brother Clarence retired from a multinational company and took over Amarcas’ helm.
Angeles, now 78, and Clarence have carved secure foreign market niches, exclusively supplying seashell-inlaid mahogany furniture and gift items to a leading Japanese catalogue company, as well as kaleidoscopic pawa (abalone)-shell tile mosaics for Florida.
When Fellisimo Co. asked Amarcas to recommend a local non-government organization (NGO) for a tie-up, the company suggested the Children of Cebu Foundation, Inc. For its outreach to Cebu City streetchildren, the NGO has received since 1996 five percent of every Amarcas item sold by the Kobe-based catalogue company, Clarence shares.
Amarcas’ long and intricate process of drying, laminating and electroplating also draws local patrons. The company supplied orders of the Cebu and Mandaue City Governments for tokens given to the spouses of the ministers participating in the recent 12th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit.
Angeles narrates how a certain first lady took off the long strand of Osmeña pearls that she was wearing to give to the Asean guest that profusely expressed her admiration for the “man-made” ovals constructed from the lustrous insides of the chambered nautilus.
