CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Maranao Art
Art of the Maranao of Lake Lanao in Mindanao, Philippines: okir ornament, carved royal houses, the sarimanok, brassware and woven malong.
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About
The Maranao, whose name means people of the lake, live around Lake Lanao on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Muslim since around the 16th century, with a society organised around titled lineages, they developed one of the most distinctive decorative traditions in South-East Asia.
Its core is okir, a vocabulary of scrolling vines, ferns, leaves and stylised serpents that curl across wood and metal in flowing, asymmetrical lines. The finest carving appears on the torogan, the great house of a noble family, raised on posts and fronted by flaring carved beam ends called panolong. The sarimanok, a bird with spread wings and a fish in its beak, is the best-known emblem, carved and brightly painted for weddings and feasts. Metalworkers cast brass betel boxes, tall lidded jars and sets of kulintang gongs. Women weave the malong, a tube of cloth worn in many ways, with bright inserted bands called langkit.
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