Mentrida, just like Pigafetta almost a hundred years earlier, identfies Visayan “oro” as BULAUAN, and PILLAC for silver. He also identifies various goldsmithing techniques and terms.  Gold panning has some native terms – including  DULANG, which is a large pan for sifting gold dust or grains of sand and a DULANGAN is a locative meaning a goldmine or  “mina de oro.” DALIOMAS is “hebra de oro” ( gold strand), while DALISAY is refined gold.

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In this video, Capistrano-Baker explores the gold-smithing traditions and techniques of the Visayas from the early Western contact period.  She uses pre-18th c archival records and applies these in gold specimens  from the Ayala Museum Collection. 

Florina H. Capistrano-Baker received her Ph.D. in Art History at Columbia University. She received fellowships from the American Association of University Women, Asian Cultural Council, Ford Foundation, Columbia University, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Getty Research Institute. She is author of Art of Island Southeast Asia: The Fred and Rita Richman Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Yale University Press, 1994), Philippine Ancestral Gold (NUS Press, 2011), Philippine Gold: Treasures of Forgotten Kingdoms (Asia Society, New York, 2015), and co-editor of Transpacific Engagements: Visual Culture of Entangled Empires (Getty Research Institute, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz–Max-Planck-Institut, Ayala Foundation, forthcoming).