Field Notes
December 2009
Pottery at Barangay Putsan
Tiwi, Albay
Introduction
My attraction to pottery began when, in 2004, I discovered an emerging talent of mine
in sculpture. I was then working with paper mache. I had the wet paper pounded in mortar and
pestle and produced a sticky clump of wet paper in clay like consistency. From there, I was able
to produce jars and embossed art works and realized that clay actually allows a wide range of
expression, both for the arts and for utilities.
My first visit to the place was in 2004 during educational trip that I organized for my
colleagues at POMCAT. The activity was part of the project that POMCAT won under the
Panibagong Paraan Innovations Market Place. The project focused on renewable energy
innovations to help mitigate the effects of climate change. The visit to Putsan was to in
preparation for the establishment of a pottery project in one of the project areas of POMCAT
in Camarines Norte. The second was a few months after when I organized another educational
trip for the elementary school students of ICL to which my son belongs.
This particular field work was an exploratory initiative of testing the theory about the
interfaces of the bodies of knowledge in a particular social context. I came to the village
without any references or prior introduction but simply an avid enthusiast who want to learn
from them. There were several difficulties for this manner of entry but the results are very
promising.
The Village
Putsan is a village in the town of Tiwi of the province of
Albay. It is located at _____ and with a population of _______. The
town is more popular to have the geothermal power plant which supplies electricity to the main
Luzon grid.
Age old Tradition. Pottery at the village of Putsan is an age old
tradition. Their pots go all the way to the festivals of many nearby
provinces and are brought on boats as far as the islands of Visayas and
Mindanao as early as before the Spanish colonization of the
Philippines. Emiliana Comota, a seventy eight (78) year old woman told
==============================
Prepared by Joshua B. Guinto
Specialist, Sustainable Village Technologies, PRRM, email: jed.building.bridges@gmail,com
how she learned pottery at the very young age of 12. It was in the midst of the bad temper of
his father who insisted that they should work instead of play even during Sundays. With
remorse about loosing her childhood, she also lamented how she was not able to go to school
because of this. At her age, she is already loosing her vigor in making pots. But she proudly
tells about stories of wishing to establish a pottery shop at a village in Camarines Norte called
Pulang Daga (red earth). To date she treasures her “pagulong” and proud to own the very first
in the village.
The Clay
Clay mixture consist of two parts of the red clay and one part of the white they call
“baras”, literally meaning sand. Potters buy the earth from the landowner at a price of Php 250
per day. This rather simple arrangement covers a whole day operation of a single person
digging clay for the day with simple tools.
At the property of the Cortesanos just
about fifty meters uphill from the ceramics
factory, I found several mounds of clay newly
dug and are being dried. The pit was not
aggressively altering the landscape. The base
of the pit somehow conforms to the gentle contour of the hill. Older
pits already have grasses growing on them. One interesting excavation,
there were taros planted demonstrating a gentle extraction of the clay.
The villagers also expresses their clay deposits to have lasted for
several centuries before and with confidence would last for several
centuries more. At one point, people from the province of Laguna came over to try and buy
clay from this village to be brought all the way to the factories. But the villagers refused.
Traditional Pottery Practices
Grinding the clay uses the pagulong. It is a metal cylinder one
meter long and 30 centimers in diameter that is filled with concrete and
fixed with bamboo frames that serves as handles. The potters say these
are actually old steam pipes from the geothermal power plant. It is
rolled manually on concrete pavement to pulverize dried clay until it
gets fine. It is then mixed with a sandy kind of clay which I presume contains high amount of
silica. With water and continuous stamping with feet, the clay arrives to the right consistency
ready for forming.
Forming the pots uses the “badangan”. It is a circular piece of wood standing over a
post that allows it to rotate. Clay is placed on top of it and formed to the desired shape and
size. To date, the same design evolved to have metal plates and pillow block as support and
would rotate more efficiently.
Four years ago after visiting this village, I saw some kickwheel being used. But during my last
visit, none among the potters are using them. (Why?)
Drying the pots are done on open pavements whenever there is
good sun. the potters painstakingly spread them out in the open.
Drying requires a week or less. A dry pot is recognized by its pale
brown color and by its weight. The potters painstakingly take pots
inside the shelter before any rain. Thus, the wet seasons become the
lean months for potters and the summer months, also those that coincide with festivals are the
peak months.
Firing the pots uses a combination of dried bamboo, cogon grasses and rice straws. This
makes a very big fire which lasts for only about three (3) minutes. The potters are not satisfied
the way the pots are cooked. Some pots break and even explode in a big bang which they
explained was because of trapped air or moisture in the clay. In a few years back, someone
from another village discovered that rice hull
would be an excellent material to keep the flame
in thus focusing and prolonging the flames. Another age old technology was the use of sea
water. The cogon grasses that are laid over the pots are drenched with sea water. This makes
the grasses coagulate thus directing the flames to get focused further. They are also not
concerned if the pile gets drenched by rains as long as the flames inside the pile are strongly
burning.
In the morning of 9 December, I got the chance to observe Domingo Condat fire a pile
of clay pots. He fired one hundred (100 ) pieces of regular size pots, two hundred (200)
pieces of tersera and three hundred (300) pieces of quartera. This will yield him a gross sales
of Php 7,000.
About three inches of rice hull laid in a circular portion on the open ground. This
receives two more layers of bamboo slats where the pots would rest. The pots are carefully laid
over the bamboo slats beginning with the larger ones to the smallest pots. A small opening is
left at the center of the pile. This opening will receive the torch.
Lighting the pile requires a torch with a piece of cloth bundled on its end that is lit with
a kerosene. It is dropped at the center of the pile and then covered with another pot. The
cover directs the flames side wards where the rest of the fuel are laid. Any piece of grass or rice
hull that drops in between the pile will cause the pots to turn black which is a sign of poor
firing. Cooking takes about six to eight hours. The cooked pots are harvested the next day. The
brown clay turns to red.
The Ceramics Factory.
The factory is project that was conceived in 1996. It was organized by the
Department of Trade and Industy with funds amounting to eighteen
(Php18) million pesos from the office of then Congressman Edcel
Lagman of the province of Albay. Construction was completed in 19__
and operations began on 2000.
In contrast to the traditional pottery methods, clay in here are pulverized with a churning
cylinder that is filled with stones and water. The refined clay in water suspension is transferred
to another machine for draining. The machine yields plates of drained and refined clay which
are then fed to the pug mill. This mill molds the clay into cylinders of well refined clay ready
for forming.
The Workers.
The Department of Trade and Industry, (DTI)
through the diligent supervision of Mr. Dominic
Dycoco organized a cooperative of potters who now
runs the ceramics factory. The members of the
Putsan Ceramics Manufacturers Cooperative
(PCMI) have already installed work procedures and policies such as those
covering the use of the equipment and tools, the work shifts, payment and sales of the products
and maintenance of the entire facility.
Salvador Corino, whom I fondly called Kuya Buddy, is among the important persons in the
factory. In the beginning after the project was inaugurated, people in the village are still
reluctant to put their efforts in producing clay products in spite of the presence of the structure
and facilities. For almost nine months, he would be working alone in the factory and diligently
follow the skills that he has learned. He used to build houses with skills in carpentry and
masonry. He received a series of training plus an initial capital loan of Php 5,000. By now
provides training services on pottery for many groups and individuals in many parts of the
country. He is thankful for his perseverance which brought him a better income. He gets the
support of his entire family who now runs a pottery store adjacent to the factory.
The Interfaces of the Knowledge Systems
There is still a strong knowledge pool among the potters in the village. They produce the
regular pots and jars plus some design innovations. Several innovations that I have observed are
(1) the use of rice hull in firing, (2) the use of sea water to make the cogon grass coagulate (3)
the integration of clay pots as stove liners in the charcoal stoves built with concrete.
The ceramics technology is more scientific. They utilize a series of machines such as the mill,
the clay press machine, the pug mill and the ovens and the potter’s wheel. They are equipped
with gas fired ovens that are insulated with asbestos and are fitted with temperature gauges. A
bigger oven allows larger jars that are fed through a shelf with rollers.
For the whole month of March 2008 a volunteer worker stayed in the factory. Ms. Samantha
Sherer came from Canada and is a member of the Potters for Peace. For one month, she
conducted skills training sessions for the members of the cooperative in a wide range of
themes.
Mr. Dycoco of the DTI encouraged me to follow up this particular pool of technology from
the organization. Checking on the website of the ______ I however found it peculiar about the
gap between the mandate of the DTI and that of the ______ towards the directions. Among
the priority project of the Potters for Peace is the ceramic water filter
Finally, it came as a realization that the priority of the DTI for the ceramics factory was that to
produce decorative items such as jars, lanterns. I came to understand the good price that each
time may command at the market. With enough skills and technical support, each item can be
sold by as much as five times the selling price of the traditional clay products. For the same
amount of clay, the traditional pot may be sold for Php 40 pesos while a jar that was finely
crafted may be sold to as much as Php 250.
Mr. Corino would always wish that more of his fellow
villagers would upgrade their products to the
standards of the ceramics factory. On his hindsight
however, the factory is now getting crowded. As early
as day break, workers are already trooping to their
posts to start working and some would still stay late up
night to comply with
purchase orders. September to December is a
particularly
busy
month. Sales is at its peak in November from customers buying gifts for the Christmas
holidays.
The factory was actually built for the three adjoining villages of Putsan, Bano and Bolo. Among
the three, it was the village of Putsan who was able to put forward a donated property lot of __
square meters. The former village chief was proud to account his resourcefulness in convincing
the land owner to receive a post dated check as payment.
At the village of Bolo, another similar factory, however smaller was in place. It is located about
a kilometer north east of Putsan through an access road across the hill. The shop is about onefourth of the size of that in Putsan in floor area. It is equipped with two ovens, one clay crusher,
seven potters wheel and one newly built dome shaped kiln for open firing. In spite of all these
equipment, the factory is not producing any products.
Asked why is it so, the Barangay Captain explains about the problem of selling off the products.
He told us about his big frustration about their past efforts to sell off their products to exhibits
and trade fairs with very frustrating results. The members, he said, would want a quick return
over their products, that is, getting their money back soonest after creating the products. Mr.
Corino however would argue that the shop should have a big volume and variety of stocks
before it can attract enough potential buyers.
My Intervention
I was coming off from an earlier innovation which came from three sources. These are as
follows:
1. The Pot in Pot by Mohammed Bah Abba of
Nigeria. It is a vegetable cooler which works to
extend the freshness of the vegetables by putting
then in a double jar lined with wet sand in
between. Through evapotranspiration of the jars, the inner walls of the
inner jar cools to as much as 14 degrees Celsius. The technology would
easily be understood and possibly adopted by the potters in the community.
2. The Buko Chips stove that i earlier
developed. I developed this prototype
with reference to the rocket stove of Dr.
Larry Winiarski from Aprovecho Institute
of Colorado. The stove model that I
developed reduced the attention required in pushing in the fuel to
the furnace thus allowing the person to attend to other chores in
the house. With clay, the prototype can be further improved in
terms of the cost and access to materials and excellent insulating
effect of the clay.
3. The barbeque grill which I observed at the Netherlands. It is a barbeque grill that has a
vertical “neck”that serves as the stand and at the same time air tunnel to allow natural draft
of fresh air. The grill models at the Netherlands are made of metal. At Barangay Putsan, we
created the same design, this time with clay.
Preliminary Analysis
There are four bodies of knowledge embedded in the pottery technology in the village of
Putsan. First is the traditional pottery technologies passed across generations. Second is the
scientific pool of technologies at the ceramics factory. Third is the local knowledge both
coming from the tradition and the ceramics factory. And fourth is the knowledge coming from
outside specifically from the group of Potters for Peace represented by Samantha. My
contribution belongs to the fourth domain.
The initial investigation already yielded points of interfaces among the four technological
domains. They may be raised in the form of the following questions:
1. Why did the DTI not pursue the technologies available at the Potters for Peace? What is
their philosophy behind the designs and operations at the factory ?
2. What keeps the some of the people of Putsan preserve or not preserve their traditional
practices of pottery in spite of the strong presence of the ceramics factory?
3. How will external innovations alter their pattern of practice? Will they agitate the local
pattern of practice or will? If so, with what results?
4. What new body of knowledge will these interfaces produce? How will it be useful to the
bigger audience? How will it contribute to the re skilling of other communities that may
have similar sets of resources?
The people of Putsan have their own definition of a better quality of life. What it is, I still have
to discover through a discovery session. I have my own vision resilient communities upon
which pottery is among the important elements in such a community.
I also have to go back and find out the processes that happened to the prototypes that I
introduced. I would like to know if Mr. Corino actually fired them in the oven after they dried
or have tested them himself. I would like to know what are the attitudes of the community
towards the technologies and to which path would they want to proceed.
Conclusion
Clay is among the very abundant resource in the Philippines which remain underutilized in
many depressed communities. It is a resource that is relatively abundant and highly accessible
to many poor families. With good skills in pottery, poor families may be able to resolve many
of their domestic problems with projects such as improved cook stoves, water filters, food
containers, vegetable chillers, roof tiles and bricks.
Pottery in the village of Putsan can still produce limitless innovations that may be of relevance
to a wide range of application and may help a huge number of poor families. This exploratory
research presents a fresh approach in investigating a socio-technical problem with the
researcher being an active part of the process. I believe that through this approach, the
mechanisms embedded in the context will be stimulated even further thus producing a more
vigorous interplay of the knowledge systems within the context. The interplay of the bodies of
knowledge, if diligently pursued will allow development programs to revive a large pool of
resources which are among the essential elements in building resilient communities.