Bao (coconut shell half, used for collecting ink for tattooing)

Whang-ud

Tattooing, Body art

Date made: 2009

Tattoo accessory, Body art

2011.102.3

Tabuk, Lubuagan, Kalinga, North Luzon, Philippines

Coconut, pigment, charcoal

Process: Carved.

Height: max 93 mm approx

Diameter: max 123 mm

Analyn Salvador-Amores.
Field collector: Analyn Salvador-Amores. Collected 2010.

3 October 2011

The donor of the T-shirt features on the Pitt Rivers Museum's Body Arts web pages. In her documentary Kakau and Batok Talk: Tattoos from Hawaii and the Philippines at the conclusion of her fieldwork in the mountains of northern Luzon in the Philippines, anthropologist Analyn Salvador-Amore filmed an encounter with Hawaiian tattoo practitioner Keone Nunes and a Butbut tattoo practitioner Whang-ud. The conversations reveal a deep connection with traditional tattooing practices from Polynesia to the Philippines.
See: http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/bodyarts/index.php/multimedia/video/137-kakau-and-batok-talk-tattoos-from-hawaii-and-the-philippines.html to view the documentary. [FC 24/08/2011]

See Dphil Thesis 'Tapping Ink, Tattooing, Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Kalinga Society, 2011, Analyn Salvador-Amores, p.69 'Whiyug (ink)'... In the kitchen Whang-ud finds an unwashed aluminium pan that seems to have been unused for ages. She gently scrapes the first layer of soot from the underneath of the surface, then scrapes the inner layer and says in her soft voice: "using na nalatok whayyu kay" ("dark charcoal is good") as she gently taps the half-shell of a coconut (bao) where the fine charcoal powder has collected. About 50ml of clear water is poured into the coconut shell and gently mixed with the fine powder together with a slice of sweet potato (kamote). On other occasions she would use sugarcane soot with the mixture. Traditionally, ink is made from the charcoal powder or soot (lagit) scraped from inderneath a clay pot (fanga or whanga). When Whang-ud opts to use traditional tattoo ink from charcoal, instead of clay earthenware she scrapes soot from the bottom of an aluminium pan used for daily cooking..." [FB 30/11/2011]

SOAS Journal article 'Batok (traditional tattoos) in diaspora: the rienvention of a globally mediated Kalinga identity', 2011, Analyn Salvador-Amores.

Not on display

See: http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/bodyarts/index.php/multimedia/video/137-kakau-and-batok-talk-tattoos-from-hawaii-and-the-philippines.html to view the documentary. [FC 24/08/2011]

SOAS Journal article 'Batok (traditional tattoos) in diaspora: the rienvention of a globally mediated Kalinga identity', 2011, Analyn Salvador-Amores. [FB 30/11/2011]

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