Provenance: Provenance: A Batangueño family in Makati City

ABOUT THE WORK

This interesting mesa altar (altar table) from Batangas is a successful mélange of nineteenth and eighteenth century design elements. The tabletop is one solid piece of golden narra with receding moldings on the sides. It is supported by the four legs of the casing, with additional support provided by the four Chinese–style brackets attached to the top outer sections of the legs which run through the height of the piece. The front of the case features three sections: the smaller middle drawer is elevated and flanked by the bigger two; the middle drawer is a cutwork arch. Inverted spherical finials embellish the lower ends of the two middle divisions. Underneath the two drawers are aprons, almost like brackets, with undulating C–scroll cutwork. The sides of the casing are solid pieces of narra under which are aprons with the same undulating C–scroll cutwork; the back of the casing is also a solid piece of narra, under which are two shorter aprons with the same cutwork, almost like brackets, connected to the legs. Supporting the four sides of the case are elegant cabriole legs terminating in ogee feet (stylized ball–and–claw feet in this example) atop truncated balusters. Oddly enough for a mesa altar (altar table) of this general (archaic) style, there are no stretchers which connect all four legs, an indication that it is transitional in style and a later piece at that, dating to the second quarter of the nineteenth century (1825– 1850) instead of the last quarter of the eighteenth (1775–1800). Antique Batangas furniture are characterized by a deliberate Oriental geometry of scale and proportion, fine mature hardwoods, precise Chinese–style construction with classical mortise–and–dowel techniques, age–old durability and are sought after by serious collectors. In the early 1980s, it was the duo of Filipiniana scholar/jeweler/ antique dealer Ramon Villegas and antique dealer/wood expert Osmundo Esguerra who exposed collectors and scholars to the timeless beauty and discreet refinement of antique Batangas furniture and thus created a justifiable demand that has lasted decades. The most extensive and impressive collection of antique Batangas furniture, classic and primitive, is in the Paulino and Hetty Que collection. Acknowledgments: Ramon N Villegas Osmundo Esguerra Terry Baylosis Antonio Martino Maria Cristina C Ongpin–Roxas