Bohol resort is Visayan furniture showcase
2009
MANILA, Philippines – After a French writer waxed poetic about Amarela in Panglao Island, Bohol, and its motley of local folk furniture, his countrymen have been checking the resort out to see if the write-up was honest or mere hype. This three-year-old, 26-room resort has become a must-go place.
Corporate lawyer Lucas Nunag was planning to build a vacation house in his home province. But when he started doing the paperwork for its construction, a clause cited that buildings should have a commercial tourism purpose in a tourism estate like Panglao.
Riding on the tourism boom in Bohol, the Nunags set up the resort named after their favorite color, yellow, which in Portuguese means amarela. The main three-story edifice was built from architectural salvages while the modern annex uses floorings from tiles and woodwork from old houses.
The colors are painted in bright yellow to enhance the wood tones; they’re complemented by blue. The main areas are the atrium, where shafts of light penetrate, and the dining area that faces the Mindanao Sea.
Amarela’s charm lies in the proliferation of vintage Visayan folk furniture and their reproductions whose simple and functional lines complement the building. Although in their time these furniture pieces were as plebian as today’s Monobloc chairs, their modest provenance strikes a familiar chord, especially to Boholanos.
The locals would tell the owner they once saw similar pieces in their grandparents’ home. The presence of these folk furniture in the new environment adds warmth and introduces the enticing quality of the aged, the time-worn and the most cherished. They provide the important ambiance of comfortable equanimity and mellow well-being.
According to connoisseur and furniture maker Osmundo Esguerra, Bohol, Leyte, Cebu and Siquijor share the same design aesthetics. The lines are spare, the pieces are held together by solid mortis-and-tenon joinery. Carving is not as elaborate as the furniture from the other provinces and the favored woods are molave or tugas and balayong or bayong, which are abundant in Bohol. Esguerra says the more sophisticated craftsmanship are those made for the ilustrados and the churches.
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