Starting the journey on the 1st Filipino Tenugui "Kasbang"
The initial threads on how fateful timing move the 1st Filipino tenugui into a possibility.
Jan Vincent S. Ong
3/4/20253 min read
Welcome to these series of blog post retracing the steps on how a dash of "kismet" and drive wove the 1st Filipino tenugui into your hands today. First, I am Jan Vincent Sarabia Ong, wanderlust arts and crafts store curator at J Travel Finds. One of the feature merchandise in my store is the Japanese rectangular cloth called a Tenugui. I fell in love with this medium because of its versatility. It can be a picnic wrap. It can be a cloth to spruce up your couch or hide your messy stack of magazines. It can be a bandana for a kendo tournament or a scarf on the runway. It is up to your imagination and it is always fun to share this experience with customers at my pop-up stores.
As a selfish strategy, I would seek out cafes as my pop-up partners because my brain can't operate without good coffee. One of these cafes was Rich Watabe's SGD Coffee. We met last June 7, 2024 in his Quezon City cafe. I presented my Akishino Kama mugs from Ma by So Shi Te Tokyo. He was impressed by the ceramics from Yamaguchi. As a kendo player, he already was familiar with tenugui and would wear it as a bandana while roasting beans in the morning. Yet, he wanted me to do more than a pop-up store but have these arts and crafts be sold in his Manila Coffee Festival expo for March 2025. Rich replied that my inventory was too low for such a huge 3-Day event. These words challenged me to think bigger and create something original. It is especially from common customer inquiries that harped "Did you make this?" . As such, the seeds to be bolder were planted. While driving home after the meeting, the thought "Why don't I make my own tenugui?" lingered in my head. The idea to make my own tenugui was a dream but I didn't have tangible reason to justify it until now. The dots easily connected as the tenugui is used as a souvenir to promote cities in Japan and SGD was short for Sagada city. It fell into place to make a Sagada coffee tenugui for the Manila Coffee Festival to maximize my "raison d'etre" as a relevant spotlight partner.
So, I quickly googled "Sagada patterns" and a supportive face from the past appeared. My friend Charisse Tugade came up because of her Likha festival that was starting the next day. Charisse was a supporter of my children's book project 12 years ago and a champion of Filipino textiles. I couldn't miss the rare opportunity to catch her as she had the supreme knowledge of Sagada patterns. So, I was so excited that I drove in the early morning to be first there. The threads started stitching together tighter as her festival brought together weavers from each region in the country. Life couldn't be easier! Soon, I met Sagada weaver Rose Ann Banglo Wang who introduced me to the bag pictured above. She taught me about the diamond pattern called "Mata mata" or "Eye of God" that watches over the Ilokano people. Her explanation further pushed my confidence and curiosity about Sagada. I felt there was a hidden story that was worth mining and preserving and through a Tenugui tapestry cloth. We added each other on Facebook and this link was instrumental on creating a digital bridge between me and the Sagada elders who knew its traditions and folklore the most.
The event was also fruitful because I reconnected with muralist Dee Jae Paeste who would help make a sample draft of the Sagada tenugui to show the Department of Tokyo later in September. All these fateful pieces synchronizing together like a puzzle gave me certainty that I was on the right path. I just needed to find the other pieces and lock them together.
Next Blog Post: The twelve hour research trip to Sagada.
The 1st Filipino Tenugui will launch this March 14. To pre-order, please click here and receive a P100 discount. See you at the Manila Coffee Festival!
