MEB 134-479

Research by: Àlex Tejero Bonache
Institució dipositària: Museu Etnològic i de Cultures del Món (MuEC)
Nº inventari institucional: MEB 134-479
Breu descripció institucional: Miniature of Igorot hut. (1972) Stable composition, on a rectangular base, of a house on poles. House on four posts and four crossed beams, with a rectangular ground plan. Walls with a sliding door and a ladder. Double gable roof, the first one is made of wood with a hinge and above it a reed roof with a thatched roof. Uncompartmentalized interior. Decorations: base painted black. (2024) The artefacts from the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines held at the Museum of Ethnology and World Cultures in Barcelona appear under two different signatures (134 and 103). However, the former includes artefacts from other places, such as Japan.
Advertiment: Definition given in the institution's own inventories, which we do not necessarily share and which in some cases may be offensive or the result of prejudice.
Material: Wood. Wooden base covered with sand grains. Wooden posts, beams, and walls. Cane-covered roof. Thatched roof. Ridge of crossed reeds.
Advertiment: Terms used by scientific and academic institutions to describe the material collections held by museums of ethnology, natural history or zoology, which overlook other non-Western forms of designation and classification. While we do not necessarily share these terms, we nevertheless use them in provenance research such as this.
Mesures: 31,0 x 20,4 x 26,5 cm
Mètode d’adquisició: Deposit
Advertiment: This refers to the process of acquisition of the object/specimen by the institution currently holding it, and not to the first transfer it underwent from its original context. If you have information that may be relevant to the provenance of the object/specimen, please write to comunicacio@traficants.org.

Lloc d'adquisició: Not recorded in the museum's inventories
Advertiment: Data extracted from the documentary collections of the institution, which may be erroneous or incorrectly transcribed. The historical toponymy (often of colonial origin) has been retained to give coherence to the research.
Place of production/origin: Luzon, Philippines
Advertiment: Data extracted from the documentary collections of the institution, which may be erroneous or incorrectly transcribed. The historical toponymy (often of colonial origin) has been retained to give coherence to the research.
Collector: Not recorded in the museum's inventories
Advertiment: The personal or institutional names that appear, often associated with the colonial order, may be offensive or the result of prejudice. These references are used to give coherence to the research.
Donant: Board of Museums
Advertiment: The personal or institutional names that appear, often associated with the colonial order, may be offensive or the result of prejudice. These references are used to give coherence to the research.
Classification group: Igorot
Advertiment: Data extracted from the documentary collections of the institution, which may be erroneous or incorrectly transcribed, and which we do not necessarily share. We keep a terminology (tribe, people, ethnicity, race, country, etc.), created or manipulated during the colonial period, to give coherence to the research.
Holder of the legal property rights: Barcelona City Council
Advertiment: Reference is made to the holder of the rights recognized by the legal and juridical systems of the former colonial metropolises, regardless of the property rights that may emanate from the communities of origin.

Summary of results

This artefact was expressly designed to be displayed at the Philippines Exhibition in Madrid in 1887. The exhibition of models of indigenous constructions, along with some that imitated those of colonial manufacture, was intended to affirm the superiority of the colonizer, justifying the discourse of the civilizing mission.

Chronological reconstruction of provenance

The first record we have of this wood carving is in the Catalogue of the Philippines Exhibition held in the Retiro Park in Madrid during the summer of 1887, where it appears as ‘Idem id. Id. [Model of Igorot house] from the Banaue valley’ (Catalogue: 246). After the event, many of the artefacts remained in the Museo Biblioteca de Ultramar until it was closed in 1896, but this was probably not the case with the collection of which this artefact is a part, as it probably made its way to Barcelona after the exhibition was closed. The Museo Biblioteca de Ultramar was installed in the Palacio de la Minería, where these pieces were displayed during the exhibition. According to the museography of the Museum of Ethnology and World Cultures of Barcelona, the collection in which the artefact is included was exhibited during the 1888 Barcelona Universal Exposition, although there is no evidence of this and it is possibly an error.

In August 1895, the collection containing the artefact was without doubt already in Barcelona. Specifically, in the neighbourhood of Sant Gervasi, where the collector lived. Between October and November of the same year, a technical commission sent by the Board of Museums of Catalonia examined the collection and, in this occasion, considered that it was not suitable for inclusion in Catalan museums. A year after the loss of the Philippine colony, and perhaps for that reason, it was accepted and finally deposited in the Museo Histórico Arqueológico in 1900.

In 1902, according to the statistical yearbook of the city of Barcelona, the collection was housed in the Museo de Arte Decorativo y Arqueológico, located in the Palacio Real (now the building of the Parliament of Catalonia); in 1903, in the Museo de Objetos Curiosos y Hechos Memorables; and, in 1907, in the Museo de Arte Decorativo y Arqueológico. These last changes were merely nominal, because in practice the artefacts remained in the same place, i.e., in the Ciutadella building.

In 1932, the Museo de Arte Decorativo was dismantled and the collections were divided between the Archaeology Museum of Catalonia (MAC) and the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) for their creation. The collection probably ended up in the latter, given the fact that documents relating to it—basically reports of artefacts—can still be found in the museum’s archives.

According to one of these reports, before 1941, the collections were transferred from the National Art Museum of Catalonia to the Historical Archive of the City of Barcelona and the Museo Etnográfico. Although no ethnological or ethnographic museum is known to have existed at this time, according to the museum curators, the project already existed in the 1930s.

The artefacts probably remained in the storerooms of the Historical Archive until, before 1949, the Board of Museums transferred the collection to form the Ethnology Museum of Barcelona, where it remains to this day.

Estimation of provenance

We have no way of determining who the maker was, but we could hypothesize that the artefact was made in the province of Ifugao, where carving was a much more common practice than in other areas. It could have been made by the same craftsmen who made the Igorot anitos or figurines.

Possible alternative classifications

Model of Ifugao hut. Made to be exhibited at the Philippines Exhibition in Madrid.

Complementary sources

Bibliography:

Negociado de Estadística (1902). Anuari estadístic de la ciutat de Barcelona. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona. <http://hdl.handle.net/11703/94371>.

Negociado de Estadística (1907). Anuari estadístic de la ciutat de Barcelona. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona. <http://hdl.handle.net/11703/94376>.

Exposición General de las Islas Filipinas (1887). Catálogo de la exposición general de las Islas Filipinas celebrada en Madrid… el 30 de junio de 1887. Signatura: AHM/633416. Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional de España.

Sánchez Gómez, L. Á. (2003). Un imperio en la vitrina: El colonialismo español en el Pacífico y la Exposición de Filipinas de 1887. Madrid: CSIC Press.