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RUNO/PINE FURNITURE of the PHILIPPINE NORTHERN CORDILLERA
The multiple upland minority groups living in the remote mountains of Northern Luzon in the Philippines have traditionally turned to nearby communal forests for the principal source of materials (bamboo, grass, mahogany, palm, pine, rattan, runo) to build their homes and weave their widely-admired baskets.
No longer isolated in their high-elevation rice terraces, modernity brings changes in everyday life, as t-shirts and jeans replace locally-woven textiles, aluminum and plastic pots and pans replace baskets, and cement and tin sheet roofing replace wood and grass as building materials.
In recent years, craftsmen in the mountains have experimented with using traditional pine and runo materials in new furniture designed for the local market and for export. They have combined their own sense of design with the requests of Japanese designers ordering for Japanese retailers.
The pine and runo used in the pieces may be recycled from old houses or, more often, be recently harvested. Materials are sun rather than kiln-dried and fumigated before export.
Runo is a solid reed, an annual which grows wild at higher altitudes of the steeply inclined mountains of the Northern Cordillera. It is very durable and lasts for years untreated and exposed to bright sun and high humidity. Before its new use in furniture, runo was used in traditional houses for the drying shelf above the hearth, to make coffee and meat drying trays, as poles for beans and peas and for floor mats.
Pine is taken from old houses or new trees in mountains which rise to nearly 9000 feet. The pine is hewn by hand. Small family-oriented firms produce a wide variety of furniture shapes and styles using these traditional local forest materials. The result is modern furniture based on traditional local materials made by small family business. Homes not factories produce our pine/runo line of fine Philippine mountain furniture.
Manufacture Process of tropical pine
| Dense Tropical Pine Trees
Pine trees are found in the higher altitudes of the Luzon Cordillera mountains, generally in virgin or second growth forests. For traditional highland rice terrace communities, the forest lands were protected and a source of meat from deer and wild pigs, pine and hardwoods for house and farm use and wood, rattan and bamboo for baskets and other uses. Pine trees are usually felled individually, then planks are carved by handsaw on the steep-sloped mountains. These planks are then portered out on forest trails to local villages and markets in large towns. |
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Manufacture Process of weave in tables
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Woven tables are made in Baguio in Northern Luzon from pine, plywood and rattan. The table frame is first made then the top in added. Rattan strips are then woven in various patterns on the top and the logs of the table and the final product dyed in different colors, generally to compliment the natural color of the rattan. The pine is purchased locally but the rattan is imported into Baguio from Manila which often imports it from Indonesia or Papua New Guinea where forests are more plentiful. |
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