Though the abaca resembles a banana plant, it is actually classified as hemp. Its scientific name is Musa textilis and is commonly known as Manila hemp ever since the Manila Galleon Trade in the sixteenth century.

Abaca also yields the highly sophisticated fabric t’nalak, handwoven by the T’bolis. The T’bolis are one of the early settlers in the untrammeled mountains of South Cotabato deep in the wilderness of Mindanao, the Philippines’ last outback. The T’bolis like certain aspects of their unique culture are a vanishing breed. They are however renowned as exceptional weavers and create an unusual tie-dyed cloth used locally for ropes, blankets and ceremonial robes.

In the T’boli community, abaca fiber is extracted from the mature, fruit-bearing wild banana plant. It takes two years for the abaca plant to mature. Utmost care is taken to preserve the length and silkiness in each fiber, as they are dried in the sun and stretched in a wooden frame that resembles an outsized comb whose teeth point up. Six trunks of the plant are needed to make fifteen meters of fabric. After the fiber has been neatly smoothened out, it is transferred to a bamboo frame unto which they are evenly and closely spread, one right next to the other, as in a backstrap loom. These are held evenly in place by a wooden bar in palm wood and laid directly across the fiber to be set later in an exact position in relation to the design.

Other than its natural cream state, the traditional colors woven in t’nalak are black and red for high contrast. The color combination works exceptionally well when set in the ikat process.

T’nalak weaving has long been a part of a tradition typical in a T’boli household and the weavers of this operation naturally comprise the female members of the community. The T’boli women involve themselves in a laborious system combining tie-dye technique with weaving. Whereas in other countries, tie-dyeing is done straight in a finished fabric, the t’nalak is dyed in individual threads. The process of weaving t’nalak among the T’bolis reflects their actual way of life.

That was abaca then, totally handcrafted, painstakingly slow and expensive to produce.  The fibers were individually knotted and then dyed organically. To knot together one kilo of fiber required at least a week of intensive labor. It took almost two weeks in production to color the fibers, particularly the black which came from the leaves of the k’nalum tree, boiled and then steamed. It was said that the T’boli weavers dreamed the designs of their looms and often they themselves became temperamental in the process. The idea of imposing a deadline on the looms seemed almost impossible. Even the fibers tended to snap at midday when the temperature rose. The process of creating this cloth with its repetition of stylized animals or human designs requires absolute skill and patience. But once the finished products were washed, dried, waxed and pressed in cowrie shells, the results were often breath-taking and a touch luxurious. There is nothing quite like it until today.

Surprisingly after over fifteen years, designer Francis Dravigny developed the product mostly through research and consultation in Lyon, France, the center of the textile industry in Europe. The abaca has had evolved into a more contemporary vein. The looms are now much wider and the designer has added a few components to the fiber itself and although it is still hand woven, the cloth has a more industrial edge.

The Lyon based designer has in fact opened Interlace, a manufacturing firm located in Mandaue, Cebu that caters to the international fabric market. In these private quarters is where the actual abaca looms are being produced.
The process of warping or vertical thread preparation entails two thousand thread strands for one loom set-up in which twenty one meters is the minimum length in a single loom. The whole process of warping requires a full day.

The second process is called the loom feeding, which has three underlying procedures namely the eye, reed and pulling process. The eye procedure needs two thousand thread strands for one loom set-up. Each strand is being fed to the first and the second eye.  It is in the reed procedure where two thousand metal or stainless dents will be required for the two thousand thread strands processing. Three days are the maximum span of time to do both eye and reed feeding on the loom. Pulling is the third procedure of loom feeding wherein the two thousand thread strands will be divided by seven knots. Each knot will be pulled to straighten the warp and then tied to the wooden beam to give an even and stronger tension to the thread.

The final process is the horizontal weaving. Its basic components include a spooled tinagak and a wooden shuttle used to pass through the center of the warp. Upon reaching the other end of the loom, the weaver should swing the metal reed to compress the abaca in a repeated sequence. Then, the metallic reed is adjusted after every ten centimeters atop the loom to balance the thread. The wooden fabric should be rolled on the beam after every thirty centimeters to give tension to the fabric. In a day, the basic quota for every weaver reaches up to one and a half meters.

• by JING RAMOS photography Genesis Raña