THE BEYER FAMILY: From Collecting to Dealing

THE BEYER FAMILY: From Collecting to Dealing

By: Floy Quintos

The Art Collector – April June 1985

The name is associated with scholarship in early 20th century Philippines: Henry Otley Beyer. He was the man described by Carlos P. Romulo as the “greatest anthropologist whom we have ever had in the Philippines.”

Dr. Beyer led a storied, many faceted life. Born in Edgewood, Iowa, in 1883, he came to the Philippines in 1905, after seeing the Philippine exhibits at the St. Louis exhibition. With the exception of some years spent outside the Philippines, he lived all his life here.

His life in the Philippines may be divided into two significant phases: the period between 1905 to 1914, when as an ethnologist in the Bureau of Science, he worked among the Ifugao of the Banawe Valley and the sum of the years from 1914, when Beyer left the Ifugao region to work in the academe.

It was during this period when Beyer’s most significant works were written: the monumental 20-volume Philippine Folklore, Customs and Beliefs; A History of the Orient; Philippine and East Asian Archaeology and its Relation to the Origin of the Pacific Islands Population.

It was also during this long period when Beyer’s work in archaeology and anthropology in the Philippines became recognized as genuinely pioneering. A symposium marking his 82nd birthday in 1965 listed Beyer’s accomplishments in the fields of ethnography, ethnology, custom law, pre-history and archaeology, porcelain and textile study.

In 1910, Henry Otley Beyer married Ling-ngaya Gambuk, an Ifugao. Their son, William, now 67, worked as an agent collecting artifacts for the National Museum as well as for museums abroad. A third generation Beyer, William’s son, Henry, was also formerly a collector and is new a dealer. The family, it can be said, has completed some form of cycle, moving from collecting to dealing.

A stocky, unassuming Ifugao, Henry, 41, was named after his grandfather. Currently, he runs Tribal Arts, an antique store specializing in the arts and crafts of Northern and Southern Philippines. The business was begun by his father in the late 60′s; it was continued by Henry after a stroke nearly paralyzed his father.

Their combined collections are housed in the Beyer compound in Parañaque. The collections include Neolithic stone tools, excavated fossils, meteorites, tektites as well as the extensive library of Filipiniana that were gathered by Henry Otley Beyer. Add to this, the traditional art of the Cordillera people personally collected by both William and Henry.

The amount looks staggering and yet – as Henry says – a substantial amount of the family collection has already been lost. During the war, Dr. Beyer transferred his collection to the U.S.T. Campus. There, some 28 to 30 per cent was lost in the chaos of the liberation. After his death, an estimated 1/3 of the Filipiniana library was sold to the Australian National Library, although the books were originally offered to the University of the Philippines. The collection of excavated porcelains was sold to the Villanueva Museum in Forbes Park.

“There were 16 children in the Beyer family to send to school,” says Henry with a humour that suggests the dilemma collectors must sometimes face. “It was a question of selling off a great majority of the collection so that the family could have a source of income”. He adds that the decision to sell was made by the family “after our hotel in Banawe burned down some years ago.”

What remains in the Parañaque compound, says Henry, are the few pieces that “my father and I had collected and grown attached to.”

Henry – like his father William – grew up in the Banawe Valley in lfugao. As a child of 12, Henry often acted as a guide to tourists who visited the Valley. Even at the young age, Henry was already collecting. “The figurative spoons that today command near-exorbitant prices, I was able to buy for 50 centavos. I bought tin spoons and traded them with the villagers, who were glad to get spoons which they considered modern. I was also able to buy a good number of kinahu (hardwood bowls carved in the likeness of animals) for as low as three to four pesos. Like any child, I got tired of these quickly and often sold them to the tourists.” As the young Henry was growing up, his grandfather taught him the value of these things “both as art pieces and as ethnographic materials.”

As a young man, encouraged by both his father and his grandfather, Henry kept on collecting. “But those were the days when primitive art was not popular; it was not even considered important.” After his father’s stroke and his marriage, Henry had to become a bit more realistic: “To be a serious collector, you have to have a steady income at least or more than adequate finances. He says: “I collected because it gave me great pleasure, and only because I could afford to buy. My personal favorite was the tangkil, the armband of the Bontoc warriors. I had many very beautiful pieces which I had wanted to keep for myself. But some important family matter needed to be resolved and I had to let go of the collection.” With wry, pragmatic humour, he says, “I realized that you can not eat the tangkil.”

As a dealer, Beyer has seen the escalation of prices for good Philippine primitive art. One of his observations, readily shared by a majority of other dealers, is that the primitive art of Southeast Asia is fast replacing African art as collector’s favorites. “Africa has already been exhausted. Besides with the constant chaos there, it becomes more and more difficult to get any more pieces. Collectors have turned to Asia. But even here, it’s becoming very scarce. Indonesian primitive art is already nearly exhausted. The boom for Philippine primitive art actually began in the 70′s.”

At that time, the carved wood artifacts of Northern Philippines were still plentiful in supply. Favorite items among collectors were: the Bulol, the rice granary idols of the Ifugao, as well as carved wood items like gong handles, figuratively spoons and bowls, doors and even coffin lids. “Today the supply has dropped radically”, says Henry. “Good pieces are rare. Dealers who have agents offering them items will tell you that the quality of the items that are appearing on the marker has degenerated. Fakes have become extremely prevalent.”

Beyer adds that although most dealers claim to have a “feel” for the genuine pieces, faking has become quite sophisticated. These days, Beyer says, faking includes not only duplicating a work of art but also smearing it with a mixture of blood, glue and even glutinous rice to achieve the much-desired crust that is a hallmark of genuinely old pieces of Northern Cordillera idols. “Faking has even come to include refining old but inferior pieces, gouging out or adding details. The demand for good pieces has made fakers more clever. The shiny glasslike patina of wooden pieces has a quality we thought could never be faked, but pieces are suddenly appearing that look right – but don’t feel right.”

Beyer believes that the marker for primitive art has become so lucrative, “which is why fakers spend more time perfecting their craft.” For one, the best pieces are of ten sold to foreign collectors. Used to the exorbitant prices of African art, these collectors are only too willing to pay as high as $3,000 for a good piece of Philippine primitive art.” He remembers one exceptional Bulol which was sold to an American collector for that amount.

Barely a year later, Beyer heard that same Bulol was being sold to a European collector for $11,000 – more than three times the original amount.

Filipinos have not come to respect the primitive art of the Northern Cordillera peoples, Beyer says. “Except for a few who have done a lot of traveling, the interest in primitive art isn’t as strong as the interest in colonial furniture or santos. We seem to identify more with our colonial heritage than with our indigenous culture. In fact, I’ve noted chat we even tend to be ashamed of our indigenous cultures. Or maybe it is the lack of knowledge about the civilization of the Cordillera peoples that keeps us from admiring and understanding their work.

The transfer of the best items of primitive art to Europe and America does not alarm Beyer. While it is true that the best items are already in collections abroad, his main concern is to preserve the root of this art, the culture of the people who made these sought-after pieces. “It is not enough to just collect their art. More than that, the culture – or whatever else is left of it – must not be destroyed. Too much of the lifestyle has already changed, too many of the values are already gone, so are the traditional livelihoods which encouraged and inspired the crafts. To carve a wooden bowl for everyday use is difficult. They would rather use plastic.”

Beyer says that the change in lifestyle has meant that a lot of crafts with ritual significance have ceased to be part of native life. The gradual Christianization of the native population has been one factor chat has greatly changed Cordillera culture. Beyer remembers, “When I started collecting, I would buy a Bulol for, say, five thousand pesos. Of that amount, I knew that about one thousand went to the carver commissioned to sculpt the idol, the rest of the amount went to the purchase of pigs for the feast that would follow the installation of a new idol. Today, with most pieces in the hands of Christianized natives, the continuation of that tradition is no longer considered important.”

Beyer is glad to note that there are still carvers and weavers who can produce works in the traditional mould. “Of course, what is disturbing about the commercialization of the skill of the Cordillera craftsman is that they would rather concentrate on producing works that are sure sellers. You cannot fault weavers for turning out placemats and table runners or the carver for making bookends, because that is how they can live.” Beyer cites several obscure Ifugao carvers, who can still create works of quality. These carvers, he says, can still “preserve the traditional styles.” He also makes it a point to have a piece duplicated before it is sold. “That way, there is an existing model.”

Henry Beyer, like some other reputable dealers and collectors (he cites Panchito and Pynky Garcia and Ramon Tapales), has devoted great amounts of time to the study of indigenous art. He says that, having grown up among the Ifugao, he is sometimes bothered by the common attitude that lumps the various Cordillera peoples into the category “Igorot.”

The diversity of cultures and crafts on the Cordillera seems to be more interesting to the peoples of Europe and America. Henry gladly shows some pieces from the Beyer collections that he has chosen to keep. They are: from the Ilonggot of Nueva Ecija area, a selection of beaded necklaces that reveal a delicacy of craftsmanship in the miniature; from the Kankanai, some Tangkil that a warrior must have found very difficult to part with, a human jaw-bone with two holes drilled through (it is a grisly reminder of the days when the jaw-bones from captured heads were used as gong handles) and some Bulols, grown black and thickly crusted with the blood of sacrificial animals.

Certainly, they are not the kind of items that one does “interiors” with. Rather, they recall the Beyer family’s roots which are planted firmly among the peoples of the Cordillera.