The granulation technique involves attaching globules of gold at a precise temperature. Photographed by Neal Oshima for the February 2025 Issue of Vogue Philippines
Photographed by Neal Oshima for the February 2025 Issue of Vogue Philippines
How prehispanic Filipinos forged a golden age.
At the beginning of his 1992 essay collection Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino and Other Essays in Philippine History, the historian William Henry Scott recounts reading a paper by a Filipino student from Cornell University. The student made a passing reference to prehispanic Filipino society, supposedly citing the Spanish friar Juan Plasencia’s description of the barangay as a “tribal gathering.”
But upon further research, Scott notes those were not actually the words of the friar, with its primitive implications, but those of a Harvard professor named Frederick W. Morrison, whose translations of Plasencia were a reflection, Scott writes, of “a 20th-century preconception of what 16th-century Philippine society was like.”
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino is a valuable read particularly for unraveling these kinds of mistranslations and for unearthing how these stereotypes can distort our collective imagining of the colonial experience. Scott’s line of thinking was critical, but in many ways reparative as well.
In weaving connections between colonial authority and the lived-in reality of precolonial Filipinos, Scott asks that we question how knowledge about our ancestors is passed down, and how we might respond to these unequal power relations in knowledge production. Succeeding scholars from various disciplinary persuasions, such as Resil Mojares, Reynaldo Ileto, Vicente Rafael, and Caroline Hau, among others, continue this vital thread of questioning as they ask us to imagine: what does a postcolonial Philippines look like?
A notable addition to this growing body of postcolonial reparative reading is the ongoing exhibition at Ayala Museum titled “Reuniting the Surigao Treasure,” a treasure trove of meticulously crafted gold objects from all over the country, which provides a peek into the social and economic structures of precolonial Filipino civilization. Rings, scales, chains, earrings, beads, weights, bangles, finials. Each piece of golden material, the exhibition tells us, is a moment of recovery where we can bridge the gap between the present and the past.
As a starting point for the exhibition, gold is framed as an expressive medium, functioning as an entry point into a network of social and historical questions. Who was capable of possessing this coveted metal? In what forms or figures was it shaped into? Most importantly: what kind of narrative about our past can we glean from its uncovering?
Originally shown in 2015 at the Asia Society Museum in New York City with about 200 items, the current exhibition, a joint showcase between Ayala Museum’s permanent exhibition and a special set loaned by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, expands on its earlier iteration, bringing together a score of over a thousand found items scattered across the diverse regions of the country.
“Reuniting the Surigao Treasure” articulates a tale of our past that emphasizes the craftsmanship, economic practices, and class system of our precolonial ancestors. As its title suggests, the show is also an attempt to intertwine Ayala Museum’s permanent collection with the BSP’s set of gold findings.
Supplemented with magnifying glasses, visitors are given the chance to examine each detail closely, to peer into the shimmering quality of each craft. Among the most spectacular findings shown in the exhibition is a torso ornament, worn across the body and weighing almost four pounds, united with a pronged finial.
In her curator’s tour, Dr. Florina Capistrano-Baker describes the fineness and complexity of the ornament’s loop-in-loop chain, adorned with an outer skin of gleaming tubular beads. This intricate technique, akin to braiding rubber bands, involved the meticulous interlinking of individual loops of gold wire, showcasing the remarkable skill of pre-colonial Filipino goldsmiths.
When the Spaniards first arrived on our shores, they were astonished by the intricacy and fineness of the gold accessories worn by the Visayans. But gold also played an economical role to the early Filipinos, as a commercial mode of payment. Purchases were often carried out through gold dust which was weighed through scales or through barter rings called panika. Beyond that, these golden crafts speak of virtue and valor, ritual and revelation. They showcase a culture that had its own set of hierarchies, spiritual beliefs, and artistic practices.
“The existence of a Hindu substratum in early Philippines before conversion to Islam and Christianity was illuminating,” Dr. Capistrano-Baker said. “It was surprising and exciting to discover Hindu imagery such as the gold kinnari vessel, garuda images and other symbols associated with the Hindu god Vishnu.”
“These golden crafts speak of virtue and valor, ritual and revelation.”
The exhibition delves into the techniques that made gold artistry possible. The repoussé method, for instance, involved hammering the gold into relief from the reverse side, creating intricate designs with remarkable texture and depth. Equally captivating is the lost-wax casting technique, where a wax model is meticulously crafted, coated with a refractory material, and then replaced with molten gold—a process that requires equal amounts of precision and patience.
Dr. Capistrano-Baker highlights the incredible skill of pre-colonial goldsmiths, noting that “if you look at the quality, right, that couldn’t have been done by just any person.” This is especially evident in techniques like granulation, where tiny gold balls were meticulously attached to the surface of the gold which then created intricate patterns. “They look like gears, because they’re actually granules or globes,” she explains, describing the creation of the “kamagi” beads, renowned for their interlocking, gear-like appearance. “They’re globes that are fused together into a ring.”
This process, she emphasizes, required immense skill, especially considering that “they have the same melting point,” making it challenging to fuse the gold granules without melting them into a blob.
The photographs Neal Oshima took of the gold objects, with their analog quality, emphasize the granularity of gold. Amidst the sepia hues seeping through the photographs, the gold possesses a timeless quality, a testament to the exquisite craftsmanship honed by the precolonial Filipinos.
Oshima’s photographs feel particularly attuned to a miniaturized form of enchantment where the grain and detail of things exert a punctum, or a prick, that energizes the viewer. “Beauty at this scale,” writes curator and critic Marian Pastor Roces, “is self-evidently distant from monumentality.” The exquisiteness of the minute execution can be found across traditional Filipino arts, Roces has observed, from textiles to writing.
The Ayala Museum’s joint exhibition invites us to see gold in a new light. More than a marker of wealth, gold has shaped cultural identity and steered the course of history, offering us a valuable lens through which to understand and appreciate the richness of our pre-colonial heritage.
