Provenance: Batangas

ABOUT THE WORK

A Mesa Altar by the Batangas Master 1 by Martin I. Tinio, Jr. What we call a mesa altar nowadays was so-called because, when collectors and agents scouting for antiques in the 1960s first saw them, the tables were being used to hold the images of the household altar. In colonial inventories, however, they were simply described as ‘una mesa hecho en el Parian’, meaning that they were made in the Chinese quarter outside the Walled City. Through the riverine and coastal routes, these tables found their way to Laguna, Bulacan and Pampanga. Only after the British left in 1768 were the Chinese in the Parian allowed to settle in the provinces, provided they married native women from the places they wanted to settle in. As a result, side tables with Ming-type cabriole legs began to be made in the Southern Tagalog, Central Luzon and the Ilocos Regions. Since a majority of them were found in Batangas in the 2nd half of the 20th century, there was a tendency to attribute them to that province, whenever the actual place of origin is unknown. This particular mesa altar, made entirely of balayong, is typical of the 2nd half of the18th century and belongs to what is called nowadays as of the ‘Batangas I’ type. The most elaborate of all the altar tables produced in that province, it was found only in the homes of the richest families, so there are not too many of them extant. The table stands on four square block feet with a pinched waist supporting a platform made of a wide balayong plank carved with a pair of parallel moldings on the outer edges. Resting on squashed balimbi feet at the corners of the platform are the Ming Style cabriole legs, their pointed bottoms turning upward in front, while the curves of their legs at the shoulders becoming lateral ogees that swing to form the cusped arches of the aprons. The convex aprons at the front and the sides have curvilinear bottom edges of ogive curves and cusps that are jigsaw-outlined and shallow carved with foliate S-scrolls in the shape of stylized Chinese dragons and clouds. A large ovate central reserve flanked symmetrically by a smaller, apple-shaped one divide the front apron, these, carved and reticulated with crossed lines with a square behind each intersection, form a pattern of diagonal rows of pierced crosses. Instead of a reticulated reserve, a beautifully carved scallop shell decorates the center of the side aprons. The front edges of the horizontal lower base and drawer divider frames of the altar table are appliqued with a half-round molding flanked by a receding pair of straight ones in kamagong. Those of the carcass and vertical drawer divider are trimmed with the same wood with a slat flanked by three narrow straight receding moldings on either side. The mesa altar has three drawers, a wide one below and a pair of smaller ones above it. Each drawer, even the wide bottom one, has a solitary brass ring pull attached to a boss. The drawer faces are inlaid with a border of wide marquise-shaped lozenges of carabao bone separated by a couple of bone discs with a single disk at each corner. A pair of elaborately outlined pierced flanges tapering downward is attached to each side of the cabinet in front and at the back. They are jig-sawed outlined and embellished with shallow carved stylized Chinese cloud scrolls around a pomme-shaped reserve reticulated with the same pattern as the aprons. The narrow molding frame above the drawers is decorated like an entablature with a dentil cornice that seemingly supports the top made from a floating balayong panel miter-framed, binandeja-style, with wide planks. The front and sides edges of the top are carved with a cymatium molding ornamented with a wavy design, a most unusual pattern.