DREAM
WEAVER
DREAM
WEAVER
Lang Dulay: The Dreamweaver
Lang Dulay was born on August 03, 1928 and died on April 30, 2015. She was a T’boli princess from the Lake Sebu region in South Cotabato and known as “the dreamweaver”. Lang Dulay was only 12 years old when she first learned how to weave. Through the years, she has dreamed that someday she could pass on her talent and skills to the young in her community.
Four of her grandchildren have themselves picked up the shuttle and are learning to weave. She developed and mastered the famous beautiful T’nalak cloth of South Cotabato’s T’boli tribe. T’boli weavers are careful to observe, such as passing a single abaca thread all over the body before weaving. Dulay never washes the t’nalak with soap and avoids using soap when she is dyeing the threads in order to maintain the pureness of the abaca.
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T’nalak weaving is a tedious process that begins with stripping the stem of the abaca plant to get the fibers, coaxing even finer fibers for the textile, then drying the threads and tying each strand by hand. Afterward, there is the delicate task of setting the strands on the “bed-tying” frame made of bamboo, with an eye towards deciding which strands should be tied to resist the dye. It is the bud or tying of the abaca fibers that define the design.
Lang Dulay was in her late 70s when she received the National Living Treasure (Manlilikha ng Bayan) award from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) during 1998 for her contribution in the preservation of their culture, and for her fine craftsmanship of the delicate abaca fibers.
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