Story and photos by Marilou Guieb
SOMEWHERE near Wright Park in Baguio City, where horses for rent and saddles on sale speak of days of rough mountain riding, is the other side of life in the wild. A stone’s throw away is the showroom, where the daintiest of craft works are stored.
The entrance door and front windows of the building is a delightful show of mosaic-glass panes that open up to a stunning display of crystals and a kaleidoscope of colors that begins a walk through a maze that feels like a visit to fairyland.
Welcome to Philippine Treasures, the world of Loly Gomez, a gracious lady artist whose creations speak more eloquently of her exquisite taste for beauty and making world-class craft from seemingly insignificant raw materials.
Gomez is well known for her Christmas decors and candleholders, but the endless array of her works spans wherever her imagination takes her.
“I just look at something and I know what to do with it,” she said of her uncanny skill of designing items of beauty from material otherwise strewn about as waste.
Until she moved out from the central business district, when the friars that owned the space wanted to turn the area into dining places, Philippine Treasures was a mainstay and a landmark of homegrown businesses on Session Road.
Then, her shop displayed what she calls cathedral window-glass mosaic candleholders, that have since been a classic copied, by many other glass craftsmen.
Of being copied, she said, “I don’t really mind being copied, as this spreads beauty around.”
If anything illustrates her knack for turning what would otherwise be trash to lovely decor items, how she became a glass-mosaic artist says it best.
“When my son Anthon had a car accident and his windshield was smashed to tiny pieces, I asked him not to throw those away,” she recalled.
Since then, she has worked with broken glasses, turning these into dainty lamps and colorful mosaic art, such as seen on her window-glass panes.
Hanging light lamps over her dinner table in her home also shows her talent in turning broken things into a thing of beauty. She tells of a time when the glass lamps were broken, and that she did not want to give up the iron castings that held the lamps. She then covered the cracks with colored broken glass shaped into flowers and leaves, and the lighting now is a lovely centerpiece in her home. Her early works that continue to fascinate buyers are glass bowls decorated with butterflies, flowers and bamboo designs of powdered glass. She is also famous for her lamps, where light shines through fiery colors of glass mosaic, or pastel-colored broken glass.
Gomez is a self-taught artist, learning how to do things like dyeing glass through tedious trial-and-error experiments and lots of common sense on how something might work.
“I work with my hands. This is so when someone says it can’t be done, then I say, yes, it can,” she said, adding she does not know how to draw, so she creates work like the mosaic designs directly on her glass bowls.
With childlike glee and naivety, she enthused how amazing computer technology is, referring to her grandsons showing her how to design virtually on the computer.
“You can see how something will turn out by just clicking keys, like a building turning blue, then green, etcetera. It’s amazing,” she said.
But despite this, her restless hands continue to fiddle with material, transforming her endless imagination into finished designs.
Gomez is also an intense leaf artist. She has devised a way to make leaves pliable when processed, not simply brittle when dried. She stops at where a box of thousands of these leaves, and as if lost in another world, twiddles with them while in conversation. She puts three leaves side by side and says, “Oh, these can be like angels,” adding two leaves sideways to make wings. Beside the box is the lady airbrushing the leaves one by one with dye. Gomez said the leaves are spray-painted with dye, rather than paint, to minimize toxicity in the environment. Just the same, the lady worker, as most of her workers, wears a mask and an apron.
Gomez said they are audited twice a year for safety by an independent group.
“I observe things,” she said. Like when walking through the Subic forest trail, she looked at leaves on the trees and imagined how these could become currency for her and her workers, numbering 200 on regular seasons, and expanding on peak-production periods. A trip to the beach can end up with vans filled with driftwoods, shells and other seashore treasures on return.
She has also created expansive livelihood opportunities in the countryside, and the hundreds of thousands of collected items in boxes in her five-story production building tell the story.
She tells of how a woman in Pangasinan who collects and processes leaves for her has also trained neighbors who are happy to earn a living simply by plucking and picking up leaves.
She stops and picks up a dried lotus flower, and says it can be an angel dress upside down, or added decor to other creations. These items are sourced from as far as Mindanao, and powdered capiz shells also come from the southern parts of the country.
Feathers, sand, glitters, pine cones and hundreds of tiny objects fill her shelves.
Leaves made into floral shapes and combined with other dried things from the garden arranged on bunched-up dried twigs make for wall and table decors. Leaves also become garlands and wreaths, hanging balls of bouquets in dainty colors or fiery tones. The variety on display is overwhelmingly endless, and a walk through the passages seems almost ethereal with angels and butterflies, flowers and wreaths, lamps, glitters and shimmering beads occupying almost every inch of her space, one artwork lovelier than the other.
But even more fascinating is how and from what they are made. The production space, despite the heaps of materials, is a model of order. Every table takes on one process. Passing through a table where Styrofoam Christmas balls are being decorated, she notices with a side glance that some balls are not of the same size. The space is quiet, and one is reminded of the atmosphere created as described when the right side of the brain is at work.
“It’s like a symphony,” Gomez said, and one understands the synchrony of silent hands engrossed in creating art.
Carton boards are base materials for some angel designs. Ugly GI wires are transformed into best-selling golden angels, cone-shaped base for mini-Christmas trees. Plastic items covered with paint and glitter become world-class Christmas hangings.
Gomez is a rare combination of an artist with a business acumen, with most artists losing touch when the administrative aspect interferes. She is also a people manager, with some of her first workers refusing to retire, saying the work is enjoyable.
But the road was not always smooth, and challenges were at times almost insurmountable. Like when a bank loan was made for production and by selling time, dollar exchanges shot up, leaving them with losses.
It was a time when a backpacker saw a product called “prosperity tree” made of broken glass, hanging on wires shaped like a tree, and ordered a few boxes, and the item became a hit in the US. This made them bounce back, and to this day, they deliver items to the same fellow who came into their life in those trying years. Believing in prayer, Gomez said God provides, and her faith is steadfast to this day.
She mulls over her compulsion for beautiful decors, as it is far from the AB English degree she finished at the Ateneo de Manila.
“My father, way back in our home in Bicol, loved making and decorating Christmas trees. Perhaps it started there,” she said. Eventually, it served as a perfect match for a young mother, as she could design at home with her kids around, and had time to make meals.
How her trade all began also speaks of the authenticity and integrity of her products. She tells of the time when they were building their family house, and the wood shaves were strewn all over. She turned them into red ribbons as her Christmas tree decors. Friends saw this and asked that she make for them, too. She did and continued to make other home decors for herself and friends until she was convinced it was time to turn her hobby into a real enterprise.
Philippine Treasures was licensed in 1972 as a souvenir shop of customized and handcrafted glass votives; cone trees; copper, brass and silver products; baskets, wall, panelling, garlands and wreaths; lanterns, and silk; and natural leaf-and- flower arrangements. It has garnered many awards, including Outstanding Enterpreneur given by LandBank in 1999; Manila FAME-Katha Award in 2012; and Land Bank of the Philippines Kaagapay Award in 2015.
In 2016 she recalled with regret how her Christmas tree was burned to the ground by mischievous people. It was 10 meters tall, covered with white and silver-painted bamboo leaves and decorated with her trademark Christmas balls which—together with Architect Aris Go—was a labor of love for which she did not charge the city for her services.
Writing about Philippine Treasures can easily be about its entrepreneurial success. But beyond the scores it has made, both on the export and local markets, the story is really about Gomez and how it all began. For when told, it is one to inspire every aspiring crafstman and artist, every stay- at-home mother how to emerge a success with available materials. It is a story about how passion and imagination can turn things as simple as a fallen leaf, a piece of broken glass, wood shavings and dried twigs and weeds from a garden into a thing of beauty that can spell a life of success and fulfillment.
Image credits: Marilou Guieb