In the Philippines, the natural shrewdness of the people, who show considerable aptitude in the arts which experience has taught them will pay them best, is demonstrated by the neatness of execution which characterises many of their handiworks, demanding no small portion of skill, care, and perseverance; the elaborate execution of the gold ornaments worn by the women frequently exhibiting signs, in a very high degree, of skilful and neat workmanship.
I have seen chains, &c., of native make, quite as beautifully and as curiously worked as any I have seen in China, where those ornaments are made in more perfection than the European gold or silversmiths have as yet been able to attain.
But probably the piña cloth manufactured in the Philippines, is the best known of all the native productions, and it is a very notable instance of their advance in the manufacturing arts.
There is perhaps no more curious, beautiful, and delicate specimen of manufactures produced in any country. It varies in price according to texture and quality, ladies’ dresses of it costing as low as twenty dollars for a bastard sort of cloth, and as high as fifteen hundred dollars for a finely-worked dress. The common coarse sort used by the natives for making shirts costs them from four to ten dollars a shirt.
The colour of the coarser sorts is not, however, good; and the high price of the finer descriptions prevents its becoming generally a lady’s dress; and the inferior sorts are not much prized, chiefly because of the yellowish tinge of the white cloth. The fabric is exceedingly strong, and, I have been informed, rather improves in colour after every successive washing.
Piña handkerchiefs and scarfs are in very general use by the Manilla ladies, although they are rather expensive; the price of the former, when of good quality, being from about five to ten pounds sterling each, while for a scarf of average quality and colour about thirty pounds is paid. The coarser descriptions can be had for much less money than the sums mentioned; and the finest qualities would cost from three to four times more than the amounts I have set down.
Besides the piña there is also a sort of cloth made by the natives called jusè (pronounced husè), or siriamaio, which makes very beautiful dresses for ladies. It is manufactured from a thread obtained from the fibres of a particular sort of plantain tree, which is slightly mixed with pine-apple thread; and the fabric produced from both of these is very beautiful, being fine and transparent, and looking, to the unaccustomed eye, finer than the ordinary sort of piña cloth.
It can be made of any pattern, and is generally striped or checked with coloured threads of silk mingled with the other two descriptions.
The manufacture of both these articles is carried on to a small extent in the immediate neighbourhood of Manilla; but in the provinces of Yloylo and Camarines the best jusè is produced, the price of which is very much lower than piña, as a lady’s dress of it may be got at from seven to twenty dollars; and for the latter amount a very handsome one would be obtained.
In addition to these manufactures, which the natives have appropriated and made their own, from the greater facilities found in the Philippines than in other places less adapted by nature for their prosecution, the Government has been at some pains to force them to engage in the manufacture of cotton yarn and cloth by imposing high duties on those descriptions of foreign manufactured goods most suitable for the native dress, either from their partiality to particular colours, or from other causes.