Products

SABUTAN

Pandanus sabutan is a screw pine plant ( A screw pine family – common name PANDAN) 2-4 m high. Its full-grown leaves are fine in texture, 2 m long and 6 cm wide. It rarely produces flowers and has not yet been found to bear fruit. Sabutan grows abundantly in a semi-wild condition and propagated by suckers, and its cultivation can be extended advantageously to any part of the Philippines having moist but well- drained soil. Pandan (Pandanus Sabutan) fiber is primarily woven as mats for use in making of bags, placemats, boxes, slippers etc. This fiber is very strong and durable.

ABACA

The botanical name of abaca is Musa Textilis, a tree-like herb which is of the same genus as the common banana which it closely resembles. It is indigenous to the Philippines. The abaca is known worldwide as manila hemp. It is the strongest among natural fibers with fiber length from 3 to 9 feet or more. The abaca plant to the untrained eye, can easily be mistaken for the banana plant – without the fruit. The abaca plant is smaller than the banana although some varieties under favorable conditions can even be taller or at least equal the height of the banana plant.

BUNTAL

The talipot palm, Corypha umbraculifera, is of great economic importance. The blades of the large fan-shaped leaves yield a material for mats, sacks, and thatch; the vascular fiber of their petioles, called buntal, is the material from which the celebrated buntal hats are braided. Resembling a very fine, polished bamboo, this thin cylindrical filament is drawn from the leaf-stalk of the Buri palm. Woven buntal creates a two-directional fabric of polished finish and geometric refinement. It can be incorporated with other fibers such as knotted raffia for endless design and textural variations. Like other natural fibers, buntal is manually extracted, in this case by pulling individual fibrous materials from the Buri stalk; however, any given palm can only be harvested for one of its two distinctive fibers – either buntal, drawn from the stalk, or raffia, from the leaf – but not both. Top quality buntal approaches four feet in length.