Ambeth R. Ocampo's Blog, page 46

Stories from Artifacts

Stories from Artifacts.
Antonio de Morga's Sucesos de las islas Filipinas [Events of the Philippine Islands], published in Mexico in 1609 (left), is considered an authoritative source on the Philippines and the Filipinos at the Spanish contact. Morga was also known as the defender of the Spanish Philippines who emerged victorious against a Dutch attack in 1600. His flagship, San Diego, shipwrecked off Nasugbu and Fortune Island was brought to light in the 1990s revealing Morga to be incompetent ...

Leonor Rivera's hair in the Yuchengco Museum

Leonor Rivera's hair in the Yuchengco Museum.
Hair art was popular in the past. Two braided bands of Leonor Rivera’s hair displayed in a museum may seem creepy to us in the 21st century, but in the context of souvenirs, relics or what was sometimes called “mourning jewelry” human hair was considered a living extension of the dearly departed, it is about love and grief not being weird or morbid



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Can you caption this?

Can you caption this?
Undated photo of President and Mrs Manuel Roxas seemingly overwhelmed by the mountain of cocktail sausages. One of odds and ends I found on the bourse tables of the Bayanihan Collectors Club.



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Filipinos translate History as Kasaysayan

Filipinos translate History as Kasaysayan. But when you consult friar dictionaries of Tagalog from the 17th-19th centuries you will be surprised to see History rendered as "Salita" that we know today as "word." All made sense to me when I looked up the 1794 vocabualrio of Domingo de los Santos where I understood "salita" to be a spoken word or narrative. In other dictionaries "salita" is rendered as "cuento."
De Los Santos provides usage of historia. Magaling na salita [Good news], anong sal...

Rizal's Japanese Girlfriend

Rizal's Japanese Girlfriend.
She is often remembered as Osei-san, in some books she is Usui-seiko. Rizal met her in 1888 during a month and a half ay-over in Japan to catch a ship to San Francisco and onward to London. Photo on the left is from Trinidad Rizal, the other three were inside Rizal's own photo album preserved in the Lopez Museum and Library. Original photos are quite faded and I tried my best to enhance them and give us a face, a person behind a name we learn about in textbook histor...

Freud's Travels

Freud's Travels.
Freud is back in the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where he sat on this 18thC Spanish cannon, cast in Sevilla, that saw action in the Spanish-American War. This ignored historical relic is located between the Hatcher Graduate Library and the UM Museum of Art, I poured water on it to make the inscription legible [Lower Right]:
"Erected in honor of the U[niversity] of M[ichigan] Men who fought in the War with Spain by the Class of [18]99."
This was probably ca...

Andrew de la Torre, an analyst from upstate New York, surprised me on the

Andrew de la Torre, an analyst from upstate New York, surprised me on the
long flight to the US yesterday. He was my student in UP Diliman over 35 years ago. He kept his notes from that class for many years, learning what P.I. 100 stands for.
I’m grateful that many former students remember our class with affection.



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This Philippine Passport from 1903 is as big as a school diploma.How many folds will it take to fit in my pocket?

This Philippine Passport from 1903 is as big as a school diploma.How many folds will it take to fit in my pocket? This was issued by US Governor General William Cameron Forbes to himself. Forbes Park was named after him.



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Muntik na eko mabudol!

Muntik na eko mabudol!
Yesterday at the Bayanihan Collectors Club auction, I went through the bourse tables to check out old coins, banknotes, books, etc. Bibliophile Mario Feir set up late and I almost left because all his books were not Filipiniana, but he had albums filled with postcards, photos, and ephemera he was disposing of and what caught my eye were cigarillo labels from the early 1900s.
In the 1980's I used to own almost 400 pieces of cigar and cigarette labels that I collect...

Mother's Day always reminds me of a grainy photograph of Teodora Alonso, in her Binondo home, cuddling the skull of her favorite...

Mother's Day always reminds me of a grainy photograph of Teodora Alonso, in her Binondo home, cuddling the skull of her favorite son, Jose Rizal.
Rizal wrote: "Without her what would have been my education and my fate? Next to God, a mother is everything to a man."



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