Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
Vintage Thrilla t-shirt
At long last, we are proud to present the first vintage t-shirt from our design partners at ARKANE™... and just in time to celebrate the release of a new documentary celebrating the legendary fight. "The Thrilla in Manila" will be screened on HBO just before the Pacquiao/Hatton fight on May 2nd at 9:30p.m.
This vintage reproduction t-shirt is printed on soft, 100% organic cotton, in both men's and women's sizes.
"I was the thrilla in the Ali/Frazier Manila..." - The GZA
This vintage reproduction t-shirt is printed on soft, 100% organic cotton, in both men's and women's sizes.
"I was the thrilla in the Ali/Frazier Manila..." - The GZA
Friday, March 27, 2009
You never forget your first thrill...
How often in one's lifetime, or in any given century, is there a sporting match that takes on TRULY legendary proportions? Maybe a handful. This May 2nd at 9:30p.m., just prior to the Pacquiao/Hatton fight, HBO's will be screening a documentary on one of the last generation's historic sports events: Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier's third and final showdown for the Heavyweight Boxing Championship of the World, "The Thrilla in Manila."
How important and influential was this fight? Anyone can (and should) check out some of the many boxing resources, biographies and documentaries about Ali to get an understanding of his complex relationship with Joe Frazier, the Nation of Islam and the U.S. military and develop a sense of the cultural significance around this sporting event... and hopefully the HBO documentary will help to develop and revive this story to inspire a new generation. Taking the pop culture view, we see the influence of this fight in the creation and subsequent success of the film, "Rocky," in hip-hop lyrics used as street-cred metaphors from artists as diverse as The GZA, Keith Murray, Chamillionaire, Dem Franchise Boyz (and many more), and in fact the phrase, "Thrilla in Manila" is still used by default to describe exciting happenings in the Philippines, such as Quentin Tarantino's 2008 acceptance of a lifetime achievement award.
How badass was Muhammad Ali at this time? Bruce Lee proclaimed that didn't think he could take him, when they were both in their prime. How deep does this rivalry go? Joe Frazier's still raw about it. In the end, though, and as in all wars, both sides had victories, both suffered losses... and there was one final champion.
Fast-forward to 2009. In Manny Pacquiao, we have a Filipino boxer and current international sports hero at the top of his game. And it so happens that HBO is airing this newly-released documentary the night of the fight? It doesn't take a sports analyst or marketing guru to figure out that Manny Pacquiao is reviving the sport of boxing and that the Philippines has been returning to the collective consciousness as a result. And so in honor of this resurgence (and by a stroke of luck and coincidence, aided in part by our friend Carlo of Manila Gorilla), we have a vintage designed t-shirt just in time to celebrate... the inspiration, the first but not certainly not the last, "Thrilla in Manila..."
How important and influential was this fight? Anyone can (and should) check out some of the many boxing resources, biographies and documentaries about Ali to get an understanding of his complex relationship with Joe Frazier, the Nation of Islam and the U.S. military and develop a sense of the cultural significance around this sporting event... and hopefully the HBO documentary will help to develop and revive this story to inspire a new generation. Taking the pop culture view, we see the influence of this fight in the creation and subsequent success of the film, "Rocky," in hip-hop lyrics used as street-cred metaphors from artists as diverse as The GZA, Keith Murray, Chamillionaire, Dem Franchise Boyz (and many more), and in fact the phrase, "Thrilla in Manila" is still used by default to describe exciting happenings in the Philippines, such as Quentin Tarantino's 2008 acceptance of a lifetime achievement award.
How badass was Muhammad Ali at this time? Bruce Lee proclaimed that didn't think he could take him, when they were both in their prime. How deep does this rivalry go? Joe Frazier's still raw about it. In the end, though, and as in all wars, both sides had victories, both suffered losses... and there was one final champion.Fast-forward to 2009. In Manny Pacquiao, we have a Filipino boxer and current international sports hero at the top of his game. And it so happens that HBO is airing this newly-released documentary the night of the fight? It doesn't take a sports analyst or marketing guru to figure out that Manny Pacquiao is reviving the sport of boxing and that the Philippines has been returning to the collective consciousness as a result. And so in honor of this resurgence (and by a stroke of luck and coincidence, aided in part by our friend Carlo of Manila Gorilla), we have a vintage designed t-shirt just in time to celebrate... the inspiration, the first but not certainly not the last, "Thrilla in Manila..."
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Interview with Mike Dytri of Ludwig
This is a really cool video interview with Mike Dytri, the creative director for a brand called Ludwig. For all of you aspiring designers out there, he shows the process involved in creating clean graphics... and for those of you working on the next great street wear company, well, check this out:
Mike D. - Ludwig Van the Man from nima neems on Vimeo.
Mike D. - Ludwig Van the Man from nima neems on Vimeo.
Monday, March 23, 2009
A Pintado at Ox
This is from an interesting blog I just discovered, called Ox Barrio: There's an inaccuracy or two (see bottom of this blog), but this is otherwise a really interesting and informative article about our favorite icon/iconoclast and Filipino tattoo culture. Special thanks to the author!
While doing research on tattooing history of the Philppines in Oxford, I stumbled upon a 16 x 20 engraving of a print advert of Prince Giolo (”Jeoly) as part of the circus of curiosities in England. He died of smallpox in Ox in 1692 and was buried in a cemetery five minutes away from my residence. I wrote this in part for my research.
——————-
During the Spanish global exploration of the Philippines in the early 1500’s, the encounter with the early Filipinos in the Visayan island were called pintados or painted people. The prominent men marked their whole bodies with elaborate designs by black indelible powder. There were also widely traveled Englishmen who reached the shores of Philippines and depicted the full body markings of the Visayan men. The Belgian Theodor De Bry in the 1500’s produced numerous engravings and lithographs that portray a highly Europeanized depiction of the pintados encountered in an exploration to the Far East. The word also made its way to the Oxford English Dictionary, the practice linked the etymology of the word tatu in one of the earliest accounts of J. Burney in 1803 stating that “natives of the Philippines had the custom of marking their bodies in the manner, which, to use a word lately adopted from the language of a people more recently discovered, we call tattow.” Further, tattow is characterized by a “painful operation to form permanent marks or designs found on the skin by puncturing it and inserting a pigment of pigments.” Other variations include tatu, tatau, and tataoua, meaning “to strike or to stamp.” “Tattow,” as it was known throughout Polynesia and the globalizing world thus came into English usage as the word tattoo.
Prince Giolo: The Tattooed Prince
William Dampier, an English explorer in his account of Voyages Around the World (1717), graphically depicts the full body marking of one Visayan man, Prince Giolo (“Jeoly”) from the Meangis island of Southern Mindanao:
“He was painted all down the Breast, between his Shoulders behind; on his Thighs (mostly) before; and in the form of several broad Rings, or Bracelets around his Arms and Legs. I cannot liken the Drawings to any Figure of Animals, or the like; but they were very curious, full of great variety of Lines, Flourishes, Chequered Work & keeping a very graceful Proportion and appearing very Artificial, even to wonder, especially that upon and between his shoulders-blades.”
Dampier’s account relates how Prince Giolo and members of his family were enslaved when they were blown off course in a storm to another island. In 1690, Dampier purchased a half share in Giolo and his similarly tattooed mother, who soon died on board the ship. Dampier writes that Giolo was a son of a raja (king) in Mindanao and was tattooed with intricate designs by his wife and noble women on many occasions. He was adorned with necklaces, heavy earrings and gold abundant in the island as his huge earlobes would show. In 1668, a Spanish account by Alzina narrates that tattooing was rampant in the region. The women priestesses or babaylans are the ones who perform the tattooing on men. The person who did not tattoo himself is considered a coward, for they said, if a man did not have the courage to bear the pain inflicted by needles, how would he able to face the pain caused by enemy lances. For this reason, the braver men added additional tattoos to the usual ones which covered the body from ankles to the groin. The abdomen also was tattooed and covered the breast like a breastplate which started from the waist or stomach and ascended with great symmetry and method to the neck. In the back, the tattoo started from the ankles and went up to the waist; from there it went up to the neck.
Only the more brave and daring extended it to the neck, cheeks, eyes and forehead, tattooing even the eyelids with rays and cheeks with evenly spaced lines that went up to the nose, lips and chin or went around to the temples and front, giving them a fierce look. Giolo’s tattoos were such, for the English described the designs “as snakes and scorpions that come to life” as protection from enemies. Although considered as a “savage custom and an object of curiosity” by those who are not accustomed to it, in reality, tattooing was a means to inscribe traditional beliefs on the human body, a practice which is part and parcel of a broader range of ritual practices among the Bisayas.
Object of Curiosity
In 1691, Giolo was brought to England, it was not surprising that he became an object of curiosity. At St. John’s College, one of the old college libraries in Oxford, the original 16 x 20 broadsheet advertising published in 1692 of Giolo’s public appearance is found. The hand-written caption described Giolo as a “famous painted prince of about 30 years with exquisite and prodigious markings on a well-proportioned body.” Giolo was put on show, first as a sensation for the eyes of the London elite, including King William and Queen Mary and leased to an impresario, to satisfy the curiosity of the gaping crowd at the Blew Boar’s Head on Fleet Street in London. Giolo also became a subject of linguists when his language is not clearly understood by the English. Giolo died of smallpox in Oxford. He was buried at the churchyard of St. Ebbes, Oxford. After his death in England, part of the skin of Giolo was eventually “taken off by a surgeon [named Theodore Poynter] at the desire of the university who was willing to preserve it at the Anatomy School” (Musaem Pointerioum Vol. IV: 23). While the tattoos of Giolo provided a ‘sense of wonder’ for the spectators as a ‘rarity,’ the extraction of the part of the body whetted the ‘appetite’ of a scientific curiosity which then sought to uncover what lay underneath the tattooed skin. The public’s curious fascination with tattoos continued in coming decades with the participation of tattooed Filipinos in world fairs in the 19th century. Prince Giolo is an example of a “captured body” from a remote place, one body decorated with ‘strange’ and indelible images that remain unexplained until today.
Pintados today
Filipinos in Samar and Leyte commemorate the discovery of the pintados through a festival. The most anticipated aspect of the celebration are the festive dancers, painted from head to toe with colorful designs that resemble ‘painted ones’ (pintado) as they were found by the early explorers. The folk dances depict the many traditions that flourished before the Spaniards came to the Philippines: worship of idols, indigenous music and epic stories. However, there is no known practice of actual tattooing in the area to revive this tradition or the knowledge of the tattooed prince, Giolo.
——————-
[NOTE: Giolo was not originally from Mindanao, and was not a Filipino - at least not through a modern lens. Meangis (alternately referred to as Moangis, Miangas, or “Island of Palmas”) is not considered a part of the Philippines (although whether it was previously, I don't know), according to a 1928 U.N. document titled "The Island of Palmas case", but rather “…Palmas (or Miangas) is a single, isolated island, not one of several islands clustered together. It lies about half way between Cape San Augustin (Mindanao, Philippine Islands) and the most northerly island of the Nanusa (Nanoesa) group (Netherlands East Indies).” Traveling with his family from Meangis in a small vessel that lost control, Giolo was enslaved first in Mindanao and then traded to a different master before finally becoming Dampier’s “Prince.” - BTC]
While doing research on tattooing history of the Philppines in Oxford, I stumbled upon a 16 x 20 engraving of a print advert of Prince Giolo (”Jeoly) as part of the circus of curiosities in England. He died of smallpox in Ox in 1692 and was buried in a cemetery five minutes away from my residence. I wrote this in part for my research.
——————-
During the Spanish global exploration of the Philippines in the early 1500’s, the encounter with the early Filipinos in the Visayan island were called pintados or painted people. The prominent men marked their whole bodies with elaborate designs by black indelible powder. There were also widely traveled Englishmen who reached the shores of Philippines and depicted the full body markings of the Visayan men. The Belgian Theodor De Bry in the 1500’s produced numerous engravings and lithographs that portray a highly Europeanized depiction of the pintados encountered in an exploration to the Far East. The word also made its way to the Oxford English Dictionary, the practice linked the etymology of the word tatu in one of the earliest accounts of J. Burney in 1803 stating that “natives of the Philippines had the custom of marking their bodies in the manner, which, to use a word lately adopted from the language of a people more recently discovered, we call tattow.” Further, tattow is characterized by a “painful operation to form permanent marks or designs found on the skin by puncturing it and inserting a pigment of pigments.” Other variations include tatu, tatau, and tataoua, meaning “to strike or to stamp.” “Tattow,” as it was known throughout Polynesia and the globalizing world thus came into English usage as the word tattoo.
Prince Giolo: The Tattooed Prince
William Dampier, an English explorer in his account of Voyages Around the World (1717), graphically depicts the full body marking of one Visayan man, Prince Giolo (“Jeoly”) from the Meangis island of Southern Mindanao:
“He was painted all down the Breast, between his Shoulders behind; on his Thighs (mostly) before; and in the form of several broad Rings, or Bracelets around his Arms and Legs. I cannot liken the Drawings to any Figure of Animals, or the like; but they were very curious, full of great variety of Lines, Flourishes, Chequered Work & keeping a very graceful Proportion and appearing very Artificial, even to wonder, especially that upon and between his shoulders-blades.”
Dampier’s account relates how Prince Giolo and members of his family were enslaved when they were blown off course in a storm to another island. In 1690, Dampier purchased a half share in Giolo and his similarly tattooed mother, who soon died on board the ship. Dampier writes that Giolo was a son of a raja (king) in Mindanao and was tattooed with intricate designs by his wife and noble women on many occasions. He was adorned with necklaces, heavy earrings and gold abundant in the island as his huge earlobes would show. In 1668, a Spanish account by Alzina narrates that tattooing was rampant in the region. The women priestesses or babaylans are the ones who perform the tattooing on men. The person who did not tattoo himself is considered a coward, for they said, if a man did not have the courage to bear the pain inflicted by needles, how would he able to face the pain caused by enemy lances. For this reason, the braver men added additional tattoos to the usual ones which covered the body from ankles to the groin. The abdomen also was tattooed and covered the breast like a breastplate which started from the waist or stomach and ascended with great symmetry and method to the neck. In the back, the tattoo started from the ankles and went up to the waist; from there it went up to the neck.
Only the more brave and daring extended it to the neck, cheeks, eyes and forehead, tattooing even the eyelids with rays and cheeks with evenly spaced lines that went up to the nose, lips and chin or went around to the temples and front, giving them a fierce look. Giolo’s tattoos were such, for the English described the designs “as snakes and scorpions that come to life” as protection from enemies. Although considered as a “savage custom and an object of curiosity” by those who are not accustomed to it, in reality, tattooing was a means to inscribe traditional beliefs on the human body, a practice which is part and parcel of a broader range of ritual practices among the Bisayas.
Object of Curiosity
In 1691, Giolo was brought to England, it was not surprising that he became an object of curiosity. At St. John’s College, one of the old college libraries in Oxford, the original 16 x 20 broadsheet advertising published in 1692 of Giolo’s public appearance is found. The hand-written caption described Giolo as a “famous painted prince of about 30 years with exquisite and prodigious markings on a well-proportioned body.” Giolo was put on show, first as a sensation for the eyes of the London elite, including King William and Queen Mary and leased to an impresario, to satisfy the curiosity of the gaping crowd at the Blew Boar’s Head on Fleet Street in London. Giolo also became a subject of linguists when his language is not clearly understood by the English. Giolo died of smallpox in Oxford. He was buried at the churchyard of St. Ebbes, Oxford. After his death in England, part of the skin of Giolo was eventually “taken off by a surgeon [named Theodore Poynter] at the desire of the university who was willing to preserve it at the Anatomy School” (Musaem Pointerioum Vol. IV: 23). While the tattoos of Giolo provided a ‘sense of wonder’ for the spectators as a ‘rarity,’ the extraction of the part of the body whetted the ‘appetite’ of a scientific curiosity which then sought to uncover what lay underneath the tattooed skin. The public’s curious fascination with tattoos continued in coming decades with the participation of tattooed Filipinos in world fairs in the 19th century. Prince Giolo is an example of a “captured body” from a remote place, one body decorated with ‘strange’ and indelible images that remain unexplained until today.
Pintados today
Filipinos in Samar and Leyte commemorate the discovery of the pintados through a festival. The most anticipated aspect of the celebration are the festive dancers, painted from head to toe with colorful designs that resemble ‘painted ones’ (pintado) as they were found by the early explorers. The folk dances depict the many traditions that flourished before the Spaniards came to the Philippines: worship of idols, indigenous music and epic stories. However, there is no known practice of actual tattooing in the area to revive this tradition or the knowledge of the tattooed prince, Giolo.
——————-
[NOTE: Giolo was not originally from Mindanao, and was not a Filipino - at least not through a modern lens. Meangis (alternately referred to as Moangis, Miangas, or “Island of Palmas”) is not considered a part of the Philippines (although whether it was previously, I don't know), according to a 1928 U.N. document titled "The Island of Palmas case", but rather “…Palmas (or Miangas) is a single, isolated island, not one of several islands clustered together. It lies about half way between Cape San Augustin (Mindanao, Philippine Islands) and the most northerly island of the Nanusa (Nanoesa) group (Netherlands East Indies).” Traveling with his family from Meangis in a small vessel that lost control, Giolo was enslaved first in Mindanao and then traded to a different master before finally becoming Dampier’s “Prince.” - BTC]
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