Among the many ethnic groups in the Philippines, the T'boli stands out for their marked and characteristic penchant for personal adornment. This evident in their costumes, body ornaments, hairstyle and cosmetic practices. According to T'boli belief, the gods created man and woman to look attractive so that they would be drawn for each other and procreate.
T'boli women learn the skills of looking beautiful from an early age. It is not uncommon to see five to six-year-old girls fully made up, like their elder sisters or mothers. Eyebrows are plucked and painted and an mtal hifi or beauty spot is placed on one cheek. The face is powdered by mix composed predominantly of lime, and the lips are enhanced in color from the fruit of trees. T'boli women wear a traditional T'boli hairdo with the hair parted laterally along the axis of the ears. The hair along the front is allowed to fall in bangs over the woman's brow, with some tufts allowed to hang loosely along the cheeks, and the rest pulled backward and tied into a bun at the nape. A suwat or comb is stuck across the back of the woman's head. The T'boli women are not satisfied with one earring in each ear. The more earrings, the better, thus, their ears are pierced no only on the lobes but also along the other rim.
T'boli men and women regard white teeth as ugly, fit only for animals. Thus, the T'boli practices tamblang, in which they file their teeth into nihik or regular shapes and blacken them with the sap of a wild tree bark such as silob or olit. To oindicate their wealth, prominent T'boli, such as a datu or his wife, adorn their teeth with gold, a practice adapted from Muslims.
T'boli has them tattooed not just for vanity but because they believe that tattoos glow after death and light the way into the next world. Men have their forearms and chests tattooed with bakung (stylized animals) and hakang (human) designs, blata (fern) and ligo bed (zigzag) patterns. The women have their calves, forearms, and breasts tattooed in this manner.
Another form of body d飯r is scarification, achieved by applying live coals onto the skin. The more scars the man has, the braver he is considered to be.
The T'boli woman has different attires for different occasions. While working on the fields, she wears a kgal taha soung, a plain black or navy blue long sleeved collarless waist length, tight-fitting blouse.
Tsing or rings are worn in sets of five on each finger and toe, often with the brass rings alternated by carabao-horn rings. The rings can be plain or compound bands with simple triangular ornamentation.
Crowing the T'boli woman's head are the combs which comes in several varieties, four of which are the suwat blakang, made of bamboo; suwat tembuku, a short comb decorated with a piece of mirror as the central decoration motif; suwat lmimot , a short comb decorated with colored glass beads;and suwat hanafak, made of brass. Aside from combs, T'boli women have taken to wearing cannon towels on their heads acquired from lowlanders sari-sari or variety stores. In this items, no traditional colors are followed; they acquire the most wildly colorful towels.
For farm work or traveling, the slaong kinibang is worn, a round salakot (wide-brimmed hat) 50 cm in diameter woven with bamboo strips and entirely covered by a geometric patchwork of red , white, and black cloth, each hat always unique and original. Underneath, the slaong kinibang is lined with red cloth that hangs along the sides an back when worn, to protect the wearer from the suns glare. Some slaong are decorated with two long bands of fancy beadwork with horsehair tassels at the ends. Known as bangat slaong, these are worn on special occasions.
While the women
retain much of their traditional costumes, T'boli men don their
costumes only on special occasions. They ordinarily go about in
shirts and trousers like any rural Filipino. Their traditional
costume, which is made of abaca, consists of the kgal sasro, a
long sleeved, tight-fitting collarless jacket; and the sawal
taho, a knee or ankle-length pair of pants the waist section of
which extends up to the shoulders, secured with an abaca band
along the waist and made to fall, like a small skirt, covering
the hips and upper thighs.
The men's headgear range from the simple olew or turban, to the slaong naf, a conical but very hat decorated with simple geometric designs in black and white, done on woven bamboo strips and topped by a fundu or decorative glass or brass knob. The inside lining is woven rattan. The slaong fenundo is less flat than the slaong naf, with a cross section resembling a squat tudor arch; it is made of straw colored, even thread-thick, nitolike material sewn down in black, minute, even stitches.
Part of the accoutrements of tyh T'boli made is the hilot from which his kafilan (sword) is suspended. A datu often wears the angkul, of sash of thick cloth that is a mark of authority.
T'boli missile weapons are generally made of yantok (rattan) and bamboo, and tipped with brass arrowheads or spearheads. While thereare special applications for the different types of bows and spears, these are not decorate.
It is in there bladed weapons thst the t'boli focus their decorative skills. The sudeng or swords have long blades and hilts made of hardwood called bialong. The types of sudeng are the lanti, whose brass hilt is ornamented with geometric designs and 5-cm lengths of chain with tnoyong or hawk bells attach to their ends; the tedeng, which has no decoration; the kafilan, a bolo like sword; and the tok , which, because of certain ritual associations, is the most decorated of t'boli sudeng. The tok has a 60-70 cm single-edged blade decorated with geometric designs, and richly ornamented hilt with 5-cm lengths of chain attach to its edge, with hawk bells at their ends. The tock's scabbard is made of wood held together by three to four metal bands. A geometric design is etched on the black surface, which is highlighted by the woods natural light color. T'boli kabaho of knives are as richly decorated as the tok and come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
The T'boli metal craft distinguishes T'boli culture and his linked ginton, the god of metal work, who occupies a stellar place in the T'boli pantheon. The T'boli, however, give no indication ever possessed any knowledge of mining their own metals. Whatever metal there is to work on comes from scraps that the T'boli manages to get. Those, in the case of brass or bronze there are no standards alloy proportions. Copper was once obtained from one centavo coin, while steel came from the springs of tracks abandoned along some highway in the low lands.
The T'boli forge of guno lumubon has afos lubon (bellows) made of cylinders 70cm high and 15cm in diameter, which have rattan pistons fitted with chicken feathers at the end of each piston head. Air comes from a 5cm diameter bamboo section attach to the bamboo lubon; held at the other and by the kotong lubon are stones which surround the furnace and beats this with a solon(hammer) on a lendasan(anvil).
After the initial forging, the blade are honed and polished with whetstones and further tempered over the fire. Once the basic blade is complete, it is decorated with brass or copper inlays or etched with geometric designs.
For artifacts with more intricate designs such as sword hilts, betel nut boxes, girdle buckles, anklets, and hawk bells the cirri Perdue or lost-wax method is used. Beeswax is applied over a clay core until the desired the knees is achieved; this ranges from 1-3mm. the designs of rows of uniform triangles, double-spirals (s-shaped), cord-bands, and other geometric figures are impressed on the wax original, while kneaded was cords are attached in high relief onto their proper places in overall design .Once completed, this snofut (model) is covered with fine clay, leaving only an outlet that flares out through the clay. This is left to dry and harden for five days, after which it is fined and the molten was poured into this nisif or clay mold. The metal is then allowed to cool, after the nisifi broken, revealing the finished artifact.
The third major area of T'boli metalwork consists of bracelets and solid anklets and the chain mail for the hilot worn by the women. This is made by drawing a superheated olo or row bronze bar through a gono hagalus (metal gradator) with holes of varying diameter to produce wires of different gauges, from the thick diameters of the blonso to the fine hilot chains. These wires are then wound aroud the wires corresponding to the diameter of the ornament desires.
A resent product of the metalwork tradition is the t'boli figurine. Developed through the same old cire perdue process, these 7.5-10cm statuettes portray T'boli men and women in their characteristic attire, and engaged in typical chores.
T'boli weaving is another skill that has been raised to the level of art. Their traditional cloth, the T'nalak is made of krungon (abaca fiver) extracted from the mature, fruit-bearing, wild abaca. Each fiber is carefully dried in the sun and stretch at the gono smoi, a comb like wooden frame with teeth pointing up, to poreseve the length and silkiness of each fiver.
After all the fibers have been neatly smoothed out, they are transferred to bed, a 50-400cm bamboo frame, onto which they are evenly and closely spread, one just next to another, as in a loom. These are held evenly in place by the tladai (wooden bar) laid across, and directly over the fiber, which will be set in this exact position (in relation to another)once the dyeing process would have been finished, this being the warp of the cloth to be woven. It is while the fiver is evenly stretched on the bed that the traditional T'boli designs are knotted into them according to the tie-dye technique.
The areas of these fibers (warp) that must remain free from dye, are covered with little individual lendek (knots), tied with separate pieces of thread treated with wax, so that when the woof is immersed in the dye, only the exposed parts are dyed. This lasts for week, as knot after knot is tied into place. T'boli women do not sketch or draw the design on the warp before them but merely follow a mental picture of a tradition design. Symmetry and distance are indicated and checked out in the process by the following measurement: dangaw, a hand span, from tip of thumb to tip of the little finger when extended; gulem sigu, a cubit, from middle finger to elbow; gulem imak, a yard, the distance between the armpit and the tip of the same arms middle finger; and difu, the span between the tip of the middle fingers of both extended arms.
At the end of this stage, the fingers stretched on the bed look as if at were entirely covered by a tightly knit swarm of black ants. These are then removed from the frame for the actual dyeing.
Traditional T'boli t'nalak has three colors: deep reddish-brown, black. and white sections of the designs are protected within the innumerable individual knots, when the woof is boiled for the first time in earthen pots with black dye. Then, the set of knots on the sections meant to be reddish-brown (according to the pattern) are removed one by one, and the woof is dyed all over again, this time is red dye. The red dye does not alter the sections that have been previously dyed at black. The last step in the dyeing process which might well last about three weeks is the removal of the remaining set of knots which have all along protected the section they covered, from both the black and the red dyes. The creamy white natural abaca color of these sections is left as is. The dyed fiber (warp) is then given a final washing in the river.
The traditional vegetable dyes the T'boli use are color fast. The material to be dyed black is simply boiled in the water with leaves of the knalum tree, and the pieces of root from the loko tree. These dyes, the only two the t?boli know of, are permanent.
The dyed and dried fiber (warp) is now set at the gono mowol (back strap loom) in the exact position that each fiber had occupied while stretched on the bed. The design is painstakingly dyed if it is to remain unaltered. One end of the gono mowol is hitched to a post or a wall in the house and kept taut by the weavers own weight as she reclines against a waist strap called a dlogong; this is slung onto the small of her back, and attached to her end of the warp.
The width of the T'boli pieces of tnalak varies accordingly to the reach of the T'boli individual wearers arm, as she sends the lungon or shuttle from right to left and left to right, weaving in the wood. According to an unalterable tradition, the thread (woof) fed by the lungon as it shuttle back and forth can only be black. Once the woof has been completely woven into the warp, the finished piece is rubbed with smaki (cattle- fish bone)into its final, evenly coruscating gloss.
The weaving of the T'nalak piece usually takes about a couple of months or more. A longer time is necessary for putting together the kumo, the typical T'boli blankets that play an important role at the moninum or marriage festivals. These kumo consist of three pieces of finished woven material, their edges stitched together, lengthwise, with the side bands, framing the rich medley of T'boli designs at the center.
As is typical in all tie-dyed material, both sides of t'boli cloth can serve as the front. The designs are exactly the same, stitch for stitch, on either side. T'nalak, however, is best appreciated not in strong, harsh light but in the soft half-light so typical of t'boli house interiors, where designs come to life and pulsate with esoteric messages.
The framework of T'nalak designs are normally interlocking zigzags, triangles, rhombuses, hexagon, chevrons, and other geometric patterns. Within this frameworks are varying motifs such as the kleng (crab), the saub, the tofi, and the gmayaw (bird-in-flight pattern); the tofi (frog); the klung (shield); the sawo (snakeskin); and the bangala (person within the home pattern).
Samples of T'boli decorative painting may be found in the lungon of dead T'boli. The painting reveals the nature of the deceaseds occupation. If the dead was a farmer, the lungon would be festooned with pictures of rice, camote, corn, and farm implements. If the dead was a hulong kulo or poet, the lungon would be painted with representations of the moon and stars. If the dead was a metalworker, one would find solon (hammer), sufit(pincers), indasan (anvil), and fire among the designs.
