Bicol's "Grass" Slippers (Tsinelas na Abaca)

"Mamay thought hard and long about how tho augment our family income to meet our growing expenses. Tlhen one day while she was supervision our palay harvest, she thought of making abaca products.

She first wove and seved abaca slippers for her children. She sent the first crude ones to my brothers in Naga. Then she made abaca hand-bags, wallets, and belts. She experimented with the different dyes and designs and never seemed to be satisfied with waht she had made. Soon her products became objects of beauty and she began to sell them.

Then almost overnight, our house, which was quite big, became an abaca handicraft factory. Our porch became the workshop of Iluminado Fetil, a shoemaker who had worked for years at the Ang Tibay footwear factory, which made the best shoes and slippers many of them custom-built for discriminating buyers. Our sala and dining rooms were crammed full of handlooms and other equepment for weaving. One bedroom became the sewing department. Our kitchen was more oftern used for dying and drying for abaca fibers than for cooking food."

an excerpt from
A BOIENEN INVENTOR
(A history of Bicol's Tsinelas na Abaca)
by Concepcion Claveria-Bulalacao
















Image Originally Uploaded by Malou C.

Earliest Accounts of Shoes in the Philippines

“The dress which these natives of Luzon wore before the advent of the Spaniards in the land, consisted of the following: for the men, clothes made of cangan fabric without collar, sewn in front with short sleeves extending down to beyond the waist, some blue and some black, while the headmen used red ones which they called chininas and a colored blanket wrapped around the waist and between the legs, in order to cover their private parts. In the middle of the waist they wore the bahague, the legs being bare and the feet also bare. The men and women go out without any outer garments and barefooted, but well adorned with gold chains and engraved earrings and bracelets.

After the Spaniards came to the land, many native men ceased to wear gee-strings and instead they wore baloon-trousers made out of the same blanket and clothes, also hats on their heads...and many of them wear shoes. Likewise, the principal women were curiously shod and many of them wear velvet shoes with gold trimmings, also white sheets as undershirts.”

Antonio de Morga, Sucesos de las islas Filipinas, 1609



"The women wear a kind of little shift, which scarcely reaches to the navel, with a handkerchief loosely covering the neck, a white linen cloth encircles the, body, and is fastened by a button at the waist: they throw over this a coloured stuff manufactured by the inhabitants of Panay. Over all is worn a mantle, for the most part black, which covers the body from head to foot. Their hair, which is black and highly beautiful, sometimes reaches to the ground: they bestow the greatest care on it, anoint it with cocoa-nut oil, plait it in the Chinese fashion, and, towards the crown of the head, form it into a knot, fastened with a gold or silver pin. They wear embroidered slippers, so very small that they only cover the toes. "

Pierre Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes orientales et à la Chine, 1774-1781



"..her slippers (Ines Cannoyan) embroidered with gold, her wedding ring capped on with pearlstone, her five combs, and her two bracelets. Brave Lam-ang put on his laced trousers, embroidered camisa, kerchief with sambiri, embroidered slippers, and his hat."

Pedro Bucaneg, "Biag ti Lam-Ang" Ilocano Epic 17th Century (some studies even suggest a pre-colonial origin)