Collection of Religious Chalkware in the Philippines ( Part 2)

Posted on March 23, 2020 by rence chan

In a recent visit to a mid-century ancestral house within Greenhills in San Juan City. I got a privilege to see some of the vintage religious chalk ware items that were on display in a family altar.

Sacred Heart of Jesus and Our Lady of Fatima were made from eskayola or chalkware

Some of the religious items are still in good condition while those expose to elements got a lot of chipping cause by natural elements and by people rubbing their hands.

Last Supper wall decor made from eskayola/ escayola or chalkware probably made in the mid 1970’s or 1980’s

In my previous post, These chalk ware items are getting hard to come by, since very few people would make them.

Collection of Religious Chalkware

Santo Niño and Our Lady of Lourdes were made from eskayola or chalkware probably in the early 1970’s.

We got about a dozen of religious chalkware, most of which were bought in different areas like Tayuman, Quiapo and Tondo by my mom. The oldest dated ones were probably bought around 1969 or 1970, while the latest one was bought around mid-1994 in Evangelista street, Quiapo district.

There were at least 2 or 3 broken religious chalkware or eskayola in our home kept in storage area. When we took the religious statues to a religious statue restorer, They told us that it would cost a few thousand of pesos just to restore the three items.

We are still thinking if it would be wise to let a professional religious restorer to restore the three broken religious statues or just left them as is.

Bibliographies and References:

Tara Hamling’s Decorating the “Godly” Household: Religious Art in Post-Reformation Britain (Yale University Press, 2010) explores the uses of large-scale religious figural and ornamental plaster moldings, mantels, wall panels, ceilings, and other interior architectural decoration in Protestant domestic spaces from 1560 to 1660.

Personal communications: Mr. Carlo Yap, Professor Dennis Maturan, Edgardo Gamo Jr., Diana Religious Supply Store, Maro Adriano, Salvacion de Vera and Mr. Peter Andres.