Jo-Liza Arts & Antiques, Inc.

Viring was no connoisseur and never pretended otherwise. She made no judgement about people’s tastes and accepted that likes and dislikes vary, doubtless one of the secrets of her success. There was something for everyone, no matter how good (or otherwise) one’s taste was: Limoges plates and chipped mami bowls, badly made repro rice gods and superb hagabi (a prestige bench, the ultimate in Ifugao possessions), ivory-headed santos with solid gold crowns and pedestrian images, doll house furniture, the unsold inventory of a woodworking shop (‘‘man in a barrel’’) in sizes ranging from ‘‘how cute’’ to ‘‘omigosh’’), brightly gold-painted kitsch, elaborate aparadors, Thai Buddhas and Bali doors, someone’s tombstone, giant rusty woks, rare books and heroes’ writings.

‘‘Catch of the day’’ would have been a good description of Jo-Liza’s early stock. In fairness, however, the inventory became more and more upscale as Viring became less and dependent on the miscellany of old houses and walk-in sellers. She became more discriminating and in time was the only dealer who could fill up an entire and entire exhibition hall and attract enough buying customers to make it worth the while.

It seems that early in the game, Viring was content with a reasonable markup over cost. A born entrepreneur, she made sure her working capital rolled continuously and was not frozen in inventory. Supply must have been plentiful then and since neither she nor her sources had firm ideas of value, cognoscenti like Manoling Morato, Ado Escudero, Teyet Pascual, and Sonny Tinio report finding extraordinary bargains-a silver horn that won a medal at the 1889 Paris Exposition, solid ivory images, gold combs and tamborin necklaces, Meissen china, sterling silver cutlery. With all the competition, my major find during those early days was what Viring assured me was former President Elpidio Quirino’s giant and super heavy desk. (I’ve been wondering ever since where to put it.)

I admit to low sales resistance and I was usually broke enough though happy after a Jo-Liza hunt. My loot of three decades include a faintly decadent kamagong divan, a tall mirror and a matching man’s dresser from a Laguna ilustardo home, a chandelier from a Pampanga auction that to this day is lusted by Museo de la Salle’s Joey Panlilio, an empty grandfather clock remodeled into cabinet for bibelots, fabulous relieve of the Birth of the Virgin Mary, my only Fernando Zobel, several camphor chests, a virinaed and silver-winged San Rafael holding a silver fish, the very same large Mexican arbol de la vida that I had admired in Belgrade (of all places) before seeing it years later forlorn in a Jo-Liza corner, the floor planks ( of ultrarare supa wood, two feet wide) of the bedroom corridor at home, etc. My only regrets are the things I let escape, such as a pair of Paz Paterno landscapes now in Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (formerly Central Bank of the Philippines).

One time she called to report that the heirs of a just-deceased collector were discreetly selling and asked if I wanted to go and look. She had been told that the family didn’t like bureaucrats. Since I was then member of the Cabinet, we decided I would be introduced as ‘‘Joe Reyes’’. (I can only plead overexcitement and callow youth.) A creaky garage door opened and we plunged into grimy and cobwebby darkness (truly a ‘‘dirty kitchen’’), emerging into a series of dim-to-dark but most definitely musty and dusty rooms piled high with cartons, brown paper-wrapped packages, stacks of newspaper, and spectacular paintings and santos. We (Viring and Joe) started negotiations with a lady, one of the heirs, returning a second time and a third. On the third visit, I decided to confess. I had barely received reluctant absolution when it comes the master of the house, saying ‘‘Oh, hello Jimmy’. The harvest of those visits included Intramuros Administration jewels; a magnificent ivory crucifix, santos of surpassing quality, the Gothic home altar in the chapel of Casa Manila museum, and so on.

The there was this mysterious house that was on my daily to-and-from-office route. Its windows were always firmly closed but one day, someone left an upstairs window open to a tantalizing glimpse of a golden arch and an old portrait. I rushed to a phone and called Viring, who revealed that she had occasionally fished odds and ends out of the said mystery house whenever the owner felt needy. Of course I asked Viring to take me along, but the owner was shy and it was awhile before I got into finger possible targets. Viring was successful, which is why the Bangko Sentral collection now has old portrait, the beautiful Juan Luna Serenade and some others.

Twice or thrice, I tagged along to inspect sad-looking houses in Manila’s old districts scheduled for demolition. I could only admire the way she recognized narra, molave and balayong, and piedra china where I saw only grime, sludge and junk with the snake, ipis and bubonic plague that probably lurked therein.

The Bangko Sentral has along Regency table on which, Viring reposted, was signed the Malolos Constitution. There was no hard evidence, no papers. It didn’t matter, as the price was just that of an ordinary 19th-century table, no premium for historical value. Anyway, the table was baptized and thereafter known as the Malolos Constitution table. A few weeks after Viring passed away, it occurred to the Bangko Sentral to check the story out. Fortunately, Viring’s driver remembered the table’s origin-a house in Paco, Manila-and also how the owner, an old lady, told the Malolos Constitution story. Since the old lady from Paco has also passed away, the mystery remains.

Viring was a hands-on manager, a one-woman band. She supervised her sales staff (called secretaries’’) and factory workers, occasionally complaining how the frequency of their vales outnumbered only their sick leaves. She realized that supply was as important as markets and personally charmed wavering sellers. She also knew when it was time to awe and clinch, when it was time to pull out of a handbag (or, as rumored, her dress front) wads of cash.

She was to it that her customers and visitors were entertained and well fed. Naturally friendly, even window shoppers were treated as guests-plied with calamamsi juice and running confidences, tempted with calories and cholesterol (her table was always set; her torta famous). Till her final illness, she would personally tour especial clients up and down the combined seven floors (including basement) of her two brick buildings, not sparing bedrooms and closets, then to her multistory showrooms across the street, after which, clients still upright, she would take them to one or both of her wood working shops and bodegas, all the while checking for dust, inspecting and supervising as she sold.

As available Philippine antiques became fewer, she turned to Spain and France, China, Thailand and Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Us (both coasts), India and I don’t know where else. Container loads of Victorian-era stained glass. Balinese doors, Ching dynasty woodwork, mother-of-pearl inlaid furniture from Vietnam, silvered furniture from some maharajah, large virinas (sometimes still with stuffed birds), piedra china, martabans old and new, wrought-iron gates, etc. arrived soon after each trip.

She saw opportunity in economic crisis and peso depreciation and about 1984 started exporting wood novelties such as birdcages, birdhouses and weather vanes. She also began reproducing antique furniture. She adjusted scale and proportions to make them fit today’s smaller homes, fashioned iron grilles into coffee tables, capiz windows to screens, balusters to lamp bases. She realized that new mood was running out and thereupon cornered the old hardwood from demolished houses. She went into mirrors, at first reproducing old styles and eventually producing her own design. Pretty soon Jo-Liza was on many international buyers’ itineraries and I should not have been surprised to see (as I did) in a London furniture warehouse, a ‘‘Venetian’’ mirror with a Jo-Liza tag.

Like Topsy, her San Juan shop just grew. The first time I dropped in, which was in the late 1960’’ the shop was just part of the ground floor of her smallish bone. As she ran out pf space, annexes sprouted one after another around the neighborhood till she built, in the 1900s, a four-story mother of antique showrooms, final solutions to the space problem. She bought a lot in the next block and made it into a bodega-cum-woodworking shop. Later she tore it down and up went and three-story brick building (using recycled bricks), bedrooms on top, showrooms below. She always had an eye on her neighbors and soon enough bought the place next door, tore it down and built her second brick building. No doubt she would have taken over the entire block had neighbors given in to her standing offers to buy. Her third brick house was a 15-minute ride away, fulfilling a childhood resolve to own (and improve) the dream house she passed by each day on the way to school.

Orchestrated by her daughters Jo Ann Salgado and Liza Maya ‘‘as Mommy would have wanted it,’’ Viring’s wake was like no other. Multibranched blackamoor candelabra and inlaid narra sofas (not pews) set the stone. Mourners sat café-style at round and were urged to help themselves at along buffet.

The unending stream of mourners from all walks of life may not have been unique, nor the extravagant flower arrangements from presidents and First Ladies, senators and congressman, justices, corporate honchos, society matrons, collectors. Neither was the presence of leaders from media, the arts, government architecture and design, all friends. The truly remarkable thing was that many of those present had been friends of Viring from when they were and cash-short enthusiasts and how the friendships, enthusiasts and business centering on Severina de Asis helped rescue a significant portion of Philippine tangible heritage and bring these to museums and private collections where they receive proper care.

Much of what people now admire in Malacañang, as well as the Coconut Palace, Tacloban’s Santo Niño Shrine, Malacañang ti Amianan in Paoay,came from Jo-Liza’s. So did contents of numerous private homes, discovered by interior designers, architectures and homeowners on Jo-Liza forays.

Much of Casa Manila, the recreated 19th-century house-musuem in Intramuros, were Jo-Liza finds, from the piedra china of the zaguan and the wood of the staircase, to Juan Luna’s portrait of a governors-general’s daughter as Minerva, a massive piano and organ, the great Murano chandelier in the sala, a rare 19th-century wood sculpture of the Crucifixion, the giant tres lunas aparador saved from its original Intramuros home when it was fortuitously hauled off to a suburb just before World War II, the reproduction woodwork and pressed tin ceilings, the china cabinets in the dining room, to the icebox in the kitchen at the end of the tour.

The Bangko Sentral art collection, much of which may go to the National Gallery of Art now being built, owes much to Viring. In addition to the Juan Lunas Serenade and the Paz Paterno Views of the Pasig River, she arranged the sale of Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo masterworks including Las Virgenes Cristianas Expuestas al Populacho and La Barca de Aqueronte, the ivory head and hands that became Nuestra Señora de las Nieves, Amorsolos, Severino Flavier Pablo’s Man with a Queue, a Carrara marble table that is reputedly one of the largest in the country , and so on and so forth.

Severina de Asis was an entrepreneur who chanced into Philippine tangible heritage. Her journey-and her client’s and friend’s-from secondhand goods to the refined world of art and antiques, has been the Jo-Liza adventure. Along the way, Viring and her Jo-Liza Antique Shop helped make sure an important part of our past is preserved. She enriched the lives and homes of a generation of connoisseurs and informed amateurs. Her lasting legacy is the museums and art galleries that contain much of her best finds and that will give pleasure and education to many years to come.