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Maria Closa Arts & Antiques Shop
by Maria Closa Arts & Antiques Shop13549 views @ 01-Nov-2017
Maria Closa specializes in exquisite collection of artifacts from the Philippines that are unique in quality, taste, and authenticity.
Her collection ranges from elegant native jewelry, to bululs, beautifully crafted local furniture, and selected fine art. Maria Closa has been established since 1982.
Maria Closa's personal experience and training has become the foundation of her philosophy of work, which advocates the development of intuition and intellect into a combination eliciting a sharp, critical focus. For her, it is necessary to train one's eye. To look and to learn, and to read and study the object's origins and meaning. More importantly, in how the object provides the viewer a pleasurable aesthetic experience.
Maria Closa's passion for the arts began at the young age of ten through the discovery of a series of excavations for artifacts in her hometown of Calatagan, Batangas by the Philippine National Museum. This tender moment of "love at first sight" alongside the fact of being born into a lineage of antique dealers formed Maria Closa’s dedication to the business of art and antiques.
Since then, her sense for the trade had led Maria Closa to establish a woven basket enterprise fifteen years later. Her pioneering spirit would further find artistic authenticity with the ethnic tribes in the north and south of the Philippines. For the love of her work, Maria Closa would trek the mountains for days, exposed to the challenges of nature, just to acquire adornments, accessories, and wooden sculptures, especially "bululs" - rice gods believed to bring good harvests. She fondly remembers her experiences during the eighties: surviving the cold mountain rains, pestered by strange insects, sleeping in a house made of native materials, witnessing tribal rituals, and eating oddly-preserved meat and drinking "tapuy" - an organic rice wine.
Through the years, Maria Closa has established close ties with dealers of artifacts from the Cordillera Mountains. And her visits to the museums and shops of Europe has taught her the value of art and antiques.
