Sunday, July 08, 2007 Weaver of Heritage By Leticia Suarez-Orendain
A rachne was a mortal gifted in weaving. Her unfortunate pride led Athena, the goddess of wisdom, war, the arts, industry, justice and skill, to turn the audacious woman into a spider.
There in Barangay Tulic, Sitio Cancainap, Argao, Arachne archetypes continue weaving a heritage handed down to them by their mothers—not as a punishment but as a gift of industry.
Weaving is a cottage industry helping families in Tulic. One weaver said they receive orders for placemats and lampshades.
Hablon (weaving) they call it, a word derived from habol or blanket, the main product; although in today’s business parlance, the products have found new use as lampshades, pillowcases, placemats, or table runners.
The weavers (tejedoras) use traditional designs in addition to their client’s ideas for made-to-order fabrics, such as gold threads interwoven in the cloth.
Hablon products are tough and durable. Weavers use jute, poly-hemp, polyester-abaca or abaca with gold threads for placemats, table runners, lampshades and even fashion wear. Cotton is used for fabrics requiring softness.
Lauriana “Auring” Ulagor, 55, has been weaving sukad sa gamay pa ko (since I was young), she said one afternoon when a group from the media, the academe and the tour industry took part in a heritage workshop hosted by the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (Rafi). The finishing trim was a tour in the historic towns of Argao and Boljoon, Cebu.
“I learned weaving from my mother, Claudia,” Auring said in Cebuano. This livelihood feeds her four children and has helped in the upkeep of her house near the gamaan (or hablonan, a weaving house).
Another weaver, Teofila Mier, 49, said, “The gamaan was built on Dec. 8, 2002. Like the rest of the weavers, I call Auring as tiya (aunt).”
Teofila, who learned hablon from her mother, can finish three meters of cloth in one day. “I start around 8 a.m. and end at 5 p.m. But it’s all up to us how long we work. I only finished two meters today.”
This length of knowledge puts weaving in Argao to at least four scores, making it a cultural heritage sustained by the town’s women and the souvenir industry that caters to it.
However, the interest at the time of the visit was hablon technology. Seeing the simple tools and the painstaking labor magnifies your appreciation of handmade fabrics.
Making the yarn or thread is the first step in weaving. A young woman spun the jute using a galingan (spinning wheel) that wobbled to life when she stepped on the tindakan (pedal).
Auring showed the tingkal (cotton thread), which she wound through the sikuhan (shuttle). She worked the kughan (the weft or filling thread passed over and under alternately) through the tangkuban (vertical filling threads) using the sikuhan. Finished fabrics are wound around the likisan (spool).
Your brain swims in this information. You stand transfixed and care not anymore of the technology. You simply want to remember Arachne and her gumption to challenge the goddess of art.
Here in Tulic are women, goddesses in their own right, keepers of an art that threads man to his past, and winds him to his future.
It is a skill you wish would be taught to students so that they, too, can share in weaving a heritage for the next generation.
