2nd Half of 19th Century
Narra, Kamagong, Lanite and Carabao Bone
H: 36” x L : 53” x W: 24” (91 cm x 135 cm x 61 cm)

Provenance:
Lolita Arguelles Buencamino
Guadalupe Buencamino Paez, thence by descent

Almost anyone who sees a bone-inlaid piece of furniture nowadays will almost instantly say that it was made in Baliuag, Bulacan. That is not always the case, because Gapan in Nueva Ecija (which was then a part of Pampanga) was the first to make bone-inlaid furniture in the 1820s. The craft was initiated by a Chinese artisan who made the most magnificent pieces found in Nueva Ecija and Pampanga. It was only in the 1850s in Baliuag, which became a town in the 1840s, began producing furniture inlaid with carabao-bone. Its output was distributed throughout Bulacan via the Calumpit River and reached all the way to Manila, where rich families grabbed them up. This side table, called a mesa altar nowadays, belonged to Lolita Arguelles Buencamino, widow of Victor Abreu Buencamino, the 1st veterinarian in the Philippines. The Buencaminos hailed from San Miguel, Bulacan, which was a barrio of Gapan until 1840, when it became an independent municipality.

Bulacan side tables, as seen here, were mainly of the Sheraton Style with turned, tapering legs and the carcass frame inlaid with rows of diamond lozenges. The arced and scalloped aprons of this elegant piece, outlined by bull’s-eye discs of bone, are supported by the dividers between the drawers that extend below and terminate in a turned guava-like finial.

The large central drawer and the small concave-faced drawer flanking it on either side have turned kamagong drawer pulls. Their faces are line-inlaid with a quadrant-cornered oblong reserve in kamagong and lanite that frame a garland of joined bone triangles terminating in a leaf. Kamagong-eyed daisies within embellish the drawer faces that are also inlaid at the corners with small sunbursts. The table top, of one piece of narra, is bordered by line-inlay of kamagong and lanite and a row of diamond lozenges in bone.