Provenance: Maximo Viola Irene Viola Roces

ABOUT THE WORK

Máximo Sison Viola of San Miguel, Bulacan was studying medicine in the University of Barcelona, when he met Jose Rizal and became his best friend in Europe. They both became involved in the Propaganda Movement and, when Viola learned that Rizal was having difficulty in publishing the ‘Noli Me Tangere’ due to the delay of his allowance, Viola offered to lend him the money needed to have the book published. When Rizal finally received his allowance from Manila, Rizal repaid Viola by inviting him on a tour across Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland from May to June 1887, before Viola returned to the Philippines to practice his profession as a doctor in his hometown of San Miguel, Bulacan. Viola met Rizal briefly in Manila in 1892 and returned home to find that his home had been searched by the Spaniards who suspected him of having links with the secessionist movement. When the Philippine Revolution broke out, he joined the Katipuneros in Biak-na-Bato. After the Philippine-American War, he was imprisoned in a military prison in Manila by the Americans and later transferred to Olongapo. There, Viola was freed by Dr. Fresnell, an American doctor who asked for Viola's assistance in treating American soldiers who had tropical diseases, which he did not know how to treat. In his later years, Maximo Viola indulged in his hobby of making furniture from kamagong and became quite skilled, that he even garnered an award in an exposition in Manila in 1920. One of the pieces he made is this unique umbrella stand cum hatrack, sometimes called a hallway stand. The entire piece, of kamagong carved to resemble bamboo, must have been a conversation piece then as it is now. It looks like a frame of bamboo poles standing on massive bamboo roots with a rectangular tin pan between them. The latter was to prevent water from the dripping umbrellas placed on the stand from leaking onto the wooden floor. Waist-high above it is a curvilinear bamboo frame carved with leaves and branches enclosing a grid of plain wooden slats with eight openings for umbrellas. Behind the grid are upright bamboo poles, the outer, more massive ones carved with thorns cut off at the nodes for the placement of hats. Finer, rattan-like leafy poles in the middle form a whiplash frame for a rectangular mirror with edges beveled like half-moons. The top of the stand is surmounted by a crest carved with Art Nouveau bamboo poles with leaves forming the date ‘1916’. -Martin I. Tinio, Jr.