Since the 1980s, the awareness of an indigenous culture has heightened in the Philippines. Various handicrafts have been rediscovered and promoted as traditional objects by designers, organizations and agencies. Among such handicrafts is pina, which had been associated with colonialism and considered as not genuinely indigenous. This paper examines the process by which pina has been revived as one of the authentic materials and has even been used for the national dress. For this purpose, it is necessary to understand how pin a's association with colonial power was dissolved. Thus we first clarify the historical backgrounds of this material and analyze its revival mechanisms by employing a model of contextual transformation of meanings attached to the object rather than a binary oppositional model or a “movement-of-meaning” model. We argue that in this post-colonial era when the recreation of cultural identity is called on, the old value system is transformed, and that when piña is recontextualized, its multiple potentialities are rediscovered, and thus its revival made possible.

View full abstract

An influence of the constructing conditions and fabric properties on curtain configuration was discussed here. The results obtained were as follows:
1) It was shown that the regularity of curtain pleats, the visual depth and the apparent amount of pleats were influenced significantly by the times of track length (amount of fabric) in the case of pinch pleat curtain from the results by the discriminant analysis. As for the regularity of pleats, the curtain configuration was also influenced by the bending rigidity of fabrics.
2) It was shown using the quantification technique II that the constructing methods influenced the configuration. Of all the three types of curtains, i.e., pinch pleat, box pleat and gather pleat, the box pleat curtain was the most regular one in pleat configuration. The most irregular one was gather one. The visual depth and the apparent amount of pleats were much influenced by the times of track length (amount of fabric) but little influenced by the type of pleating. The visual depth and the apparent amount of pleats were influenced by the bending and shearing rigidity.
3) Curtain configuration was categorized clearly into three groups by the quantification technique IV. The group 1 contained the three types of curtains with small amount of fabric (small times of track length) ; the group 2, pinch and box type curtains with medium and large amount of fabric; and the group 3, gather type curtains with medium and large amount of fabric. It was presumed that the regularity and the apparent amount of pleats were important factors to discriminate against curtain configuration.

View full abstract