Some 15 years ago, I was driving in the direction of Lubao when I found a row
of stores along the road, and one instantly caught my eye: “PRINCE SECOND
HAND-LUMBER and Antique Shop”. Of
course, I had to stop. When I came in, I was met by a young couple, and their
little boy, who was carrying an old silver-plated monstrance. I asked if the
monstrance was for sale, and the father said, it is, but right now the boy
wouldn’t let it go, as he was “playing prusisyon”, walking around the room,
holding the monstrance, pretending to be a priest in a procession.
The
father said to give him a few minutes while he talk with his son—Prince--who,
at that point was adamantly holding tight to the monstrance and would not let
it go In the meantime, he said, please feel free to check the other stuff in
his warehouse.
Thank
God, the big piles of lumber from demolished old houses were separated from the
“antique” section of his shop, that included vintage furniture, aparadors,
salvaged architectural details and iron grills. I noticed a few religious items
there: an escayola Buenviaje in its own urna, a framed communion certificate.
There
must be more where they come from, I thought to myself. And sure enough, when I
opened a comoda, an inner shelf revealed something extraordinary—a naked santo,
with a thin manikin body, outfitted with a solid bone head and hands!
One look,
and I saw a vision of San Isidro Labrador holding a farm implement. The shop
owner entered the room at this point, ending my reverie. “Oh, you found the old
doll”, he said. I corrected him by saying that the figure is, by all
indications, a santo. “Ah, I didn't know it's a santo! That means it will be a little bit more
expensive then”, he continued. Me and my big mouth.
When he
mentioned the price, well, it wasn’t bad as I imagined it to be! In fact, I
could pay for it now! So that’s how I got the bone-faced San Isidro home.
The next
work week, straight to the taller of Dr. Raffy Lopez the santo went. The 10
inch high santo, he said, was finished well, considering it was bone, a medium
difficult to carve as it is brittle, breaking easily. This does not allow the
carver much leeway to carve in finer details, which explains why bone santos do
not have well-delineated faces and hands, looking stiffer, more folksy than
their ivory counterparts. But this did not diminish at all the charming quality
of this piece.
There
was a possibility too that the santo was originally a San Jose, as it was found
without identifying elements associated with San Isidro, like an ox, kneeling
landlord, a plowing angel. But Dr. Lopez was confident he could recreate San
Isidro’s likeness using this bone figure, even without those iconographic
parts.
The
first thing he need to do was to look for a proper base for it, and he found
one—a folksy painted mortar base with remnants of green and dull yellow colors.
Once he had that, he started his work on the bone santo, a process that took a
month.
When,
finally, he revealed SAN ISIDRO LABRADOR, the results were dramatic as seen
from these photos. Only the lips needed to be defined, as the bone head still
had its original glass eyes and painted beard. A new jusi wig and an old halo
from the doctor’s collection topped the head of the santo.
The deep
yellow satin cape and the knee-length drab green tunic complemented the colors
of the base, which raised the santo’s height to about 16 inches tall. The gold
embroidery was limited to the hems of the cape and the lower part of the tunic,
fitting for a male saint.
The
restores San Isidro sports knee high, leather boots, fashioned from soft
imitation leather scraps. His left hand clutches a new, long-handled shover
made of wood and tin. As the santo was tall and narrow. I had a customized
glass case made for him, similar to Japan-made glass doll cases.
I only
have 5 bone santos in my collection, and this restored San Isidro is one of the
more special ones because of the story of its discovery, finding it by mere
happenstance.
Oh, and the silver monstrance? I got that too, the next day,
pried off from the hands of Prince by his father, while he lay sleeping. I
wonder what happened when he woke up. He should be about 18 years old now—is he
pursuing a priestly vocation? I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.
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