285. ALL THAT GLITTERS IS REALLY GOLD, by Nancy T. Lu

OUR LADY OF THE HOLY ROSARY. De Jesus family. by Maximo Vicente

By Nancy T. Lu  /  Photos by Ben Santos

Originally appeared on The Sunday Time Magazine, 16 February 1969 issue. pp. 26-27

The art of decoration by means of needle and thread is an ancient one. But what remained most fascinating is the needlework done in genuine gold.

Elaborate embroideries of fine floral pattern generally adorn the vestments of religious sttaues gracing the altars and the affluent homes of today. The glitter of gold somehow never fails to catch the attemtion of the human eye because of its richness. The leaves and the flowers  as a continuous sheet of burnished metal.

Such an observation calls for a closer scrutiny leading to the discovery that gold threads and lintejuelas are used artistically for decorative purposes.

Fine needlework in the making is shown here as four trained sewers from
the shop of Maximo Vicente embroider gold designs on the silk foundation
material stretched on the embroidery frame.

Gold threads passed and sewn at intervals vary considerably in structure and quality. A closer look that they are made by winding a high-carat gold around some silk thread. Mrs. Soledad Vicente from the shop of Maximo Vicente announced that she uses only threads imported from France. This, in some ways, accounts for the forbidding cost of ordering a santo for private use or for the church.

Furthermore, the gold leafing process used, for instance, on the Our Lady of Guadalupe in Pagsanjan makes it all the more expensive but pious individuals who are devotees of the of the Blessed Mother do not exactly mind the cost.

Some four sewers expertly-trained in the artwork on the embroidery of one assignment for months. Different kinds of stitches are tried after the silk or velvet foundation material has been stretched and temporarily sewn to an embroidery frame.

Designs are patterned after  that of antiques. Enterprising sewers try out original floral patterns. In some cases, the gold embroidery is lifted from centuries-old santos and transferred elsewhere because the original foundation materials fails to survive the onslaught of time.

Embroidering in gold used to be an uncontested preoccupation of nuns in convents. Gradually, lay families took to the trade. To date the tallere de Maximo Vicente which was established in 1908, has tuned out a good number of religious images found in parishes all over the archipelago.

Its most recently-completed commissioned jobs include the Our lady of the Rosary which has a height of one meter and sixty centimeters, including the base. It was finished in time for the fiesta of San Fernando, Pampanga. An even bigger finished work is the Our Lady of Guadalupe statue, roughly 2 meters in size with a diamond studded diadem for its crowning glory.The residents of Pagsanjan are proud of it.

French-imported gold threads varying in structure and quality
are used to bring the fine floral patterns on the vestments
of our Lady of the Rosary.

154. FINDING THE TRUE CROSS

Whether online or in antique shops, the most common religious antiques one finds for sale are crucifixes. Folk art crosses are fixtures in almost all antique fairs I’ve been to, characterized by plain wooden crosses and misshapen Christ figures. More sought after are the classically done tabletop crucifixes, with finely carved wooden Christs and with crosses trimmed with metal fittings.

Other than ivory crucifixes, the prices of such pieces have remained stable—in the range of about Php 7K- Php 15K. The demand is not as high as for free-standing santo as, maybe, for a collector, one good crucifix is enough.

I, myself, am not much of a crucifix fan, but when I see an outstanding example, I take a second look. Just like this example, recently purchased from my favourite antique dealer.

It came in a rather, shabby condition—dirty, dust-coated, with the corpus about to be detached from its arms. 

The dealer told me that the cross finials were of silver, but I couldn’t be too sure—they were blackened with age. So were the potencias and the crown of Christ too, which remained miraculously intact, all these years.

Despite these flaws, the carving of the figure was superb, right down to the gracefully draped loincloth of Christ, his taut and lean body, the elongated arms and hands (with a few missing fingers)and the fine strands of Jesus’long hair.

But what sold me was the haunting facial, pain-filled expression of Christ, made even more lifelikeby by his glassy stare. His mouth was open in anguish. How the carver managed to put such intense emotion into that small wooden face, I will never know.

For 3 days, I set about cleaning the crucifix, using Wipe Out and lots of cotton buds. More challenging was restoring the shine of the silver finials, which had ingrained dirt all over. At least two hours of metal polishing and dirt-scraping did the trick.

The corpus itself was easy to clean. After Wipe-Out, I lightly coated the body with brown shoe polish, which further deepened the “Nazareno”color of Christ and added a nice sheen to the lines.

The crucifix came with a damaged replacement base, but I had an unused stone base that was more appropriate to the piece. The mound was a bit small though, and not very stable, but it would have to do, in the meantime.

My dealer, by the way, also told me that the original owner of the crucifix claimed that the piece was the handiwork of Maximo Vicente’s talyer. You always take these revelations with a grain of salt, but regardless, this crucifix ranks as another one of my most wonderful finds, you agree?