Tamborin: the Art of Capturing Air

Originally published on the VINTA Gallery Instagram

Before the Spanish landed on Philippine soil, the archipelago was rich in gold, inspiring extensive Tagalog vocabulary for metallurgy and goldsmithing, confirming the complex process of jewellry-making. Gold was used in clothing, accessories (including dentistry, i.e. tooth jems), decorations, ceremonial weapons, ritual vessels, and currency in the form of gold barter rings. Though a symbol of status, the powerful didn't feel the need to hoard, as gold was plentiful.

In pre-colonial societies, tamborin necklaces also feature carnelians, garnets, and other imported gems in between gold beads (see our lingling-o post about the Jade Maritime Road). The most frequently used decorative techniques were, and still are, repoussé and filigree.

When Spanish missionaries forced Catholicism onto Indigenous Filipinos, they brought with them prayer rosaries, which transformed into rosarios and tamborins down the line. Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism used prayer beads, centuries before Catholics adopted their own.

A tamborin is a form of rosary, worn as a necklace, with ornate beads of silver or gold worked in the filigree technique. It has been described as the “art of capturing air” due to the negative space created for threads and granules in the sphere. It is usually met with a relicario in the middle–a pendant that began as vessels for holy relics to hold sacred items such as bones or hair of a religious figure. In the 19th century, nature-inspired themes, such as flowers and leaves, became popular motifs.

Through the colonial period, the art of gold filigree took many forms, including tamborin, rosario, relicario, and criolla. First used for religious purposes, tamborins have now become heirloom pieces, to pass onto generations, as a symbol of cultural identity.

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Sources
“Fashionable Filipinas: An Evolution of the Philippine National Dress in Photographs 1860-1960”, by Gino Gonzales and Mark Lewis Higgins, 2015
”Vintage Reliquary or Relikaryo Pendant”, Tambourine Jewellery, 2014
“Faith and Filigree: 19th Century Hispano-Filipino Gold Jewellery”, Florina H. Capistrano-Baker
“Pre-Colonial Gold in the Philippines: What We Know of its Origins, Cultural Value, and More,” Stephanie Zubiri, Tatler Asia, 2020