Wareco’s Therese Regalado on the possibilities of rattan

Wareco’s Therese Regalado goes beyond the limits of light and lightness

With a new six-piece collection of rattan furniture reinforced with metal and glass, the maker rethinks the material bounds of creativity

Words by CHRISTIAN SAN JOSE Photos by ROB FROGOSO

Therese Regalado of Wareco is a self-professed overachiever, a woman with an obsessive learnedness that enables her to have a can-do-it-all spirit. Within our six-hour interaction, she talked about her love for pushing materials to their limits, an Art Deco house she recently visited in Bacolod, and talking to a Magic 8 Ball-like tukô that she believes was taken along with the bamboo she had sourced from Rizal.

Rheuma lamp. 2021. Bamboo, stainless steel frame and hardware, T5 12" 4 watts LED bulb with receptacle (daylight), electrical wires, switch, and plug. Photo from Silverlens Gallery

Rheuma lamp. 2021. Bamboo, stainless steel frame and hardware, T5 12" 4 watts LED bulb with receptacle (daylight), electrical wires, switch, and plug. Photo from Silverlens Gallery

She calls herself a maker, since an artist, in her opinion, is another level in itself. This despite having a solo exhibit at Silverlens Galleries in 2021, where she explored the possibilities of silk and bamboo, the latter a material she is very fond of because it “feels alive.” “Every time they are bent and they respond—depending on the moisture content of each pole/cut piece—it’s as if I am given permission to shape or if the bend is not possible then their limitations are set,” she explained. “There’s a pulse.”

Bamboo has been long prized in Philippine furniture making for its accessibility and, to quote a fable involving a very showy mango tree and an unassuming bamboo tree, pliability. For her part, the alumna of local furniture workshop E. Murio uses the hollow vessels for purposes other than what it is traditionally meant for. In lieu of a papag of splintered bamboo shoots, she keeps them whole, working around its hollowness, or deconstructing it only to reconstruct and reimagine the possibilities of something sprouting out of it, something like the myth of Malakas and Maganda.

“It’s hard to work on stuff when you’re only talking to yourself.”

Inside her room at her family’s home is a relic of her time at E. Murio: a bamboo segment carved to reveal its insides illuminated by a light that can be obscured or set free by a movable panel. In 2021, the same movable mechanism made out of bent bamboo rotating around a central fluorescent tube light figured in her work for Bangkok Biennial.

If it isn’t obvious by now, lighting is her favorite object to make because “light to me also feels alive,” she said. “It also has a pulse which I translate to breathing.” She referenced an interview of designer Issey Miyake’s former right hand Makiko Minagawa—shared by her artist friend Ana La O’—where the textile designer says, “But as long as there’s sun and light, various textures are born.”

Wareco’s six-piece collection is not merely made out of rattan but is also intentionally forged with other materials like metal and glass, as a sort of reinforcement.

Founded in 2013, Therese’s brand Wareco has evolved from what it initially came to be known for: first, for utilitarian tote bags with which she wanted to end the grueling search for stuff inside, and during the pandemic, for reclaimed Japanese wooden box drawers sourced from surplus shops.

Guava Sketches, a purveyor of local and international novelty items, fashion, furniture, and design, was one of the first stores to stock Wareco in 2018. Its general manager Joan Cantemprate remembers following Therese since her time as E. Murio's production manager. “I love her works and her passion for designing objects,” Joan told Nolisoli.ph in an interview. “She is involved in every aspect from ideas to the process to actual production.”

This is partly because Wareco is a one-woman team, though that doesn’t mean Regalado’s a lone island of ideas. She admits despite a sense of stolid self-reliance, “It’s hard to work on stuff when you’re only talking to yourself.”

Over the course of the last two years, she’s worked with clients on custom furniture orders and collaborated with friends such as designer Carl Jan Cruz to create one-offs. Last year, the two reimagined the iconic Ishinomaki stool from Japanese furniture brand Ishinomaki Lab to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Therese darkened the stool’s light finish and gave it red streaks to match the cushion made out of Cruz’s studio-developed rib gabao fabric.

“She’s always game, doing her thing without being imposing… and very open to things,” Cruz said of Regalado. When he reached out to her, he said it came out of knowing each other’s expertise, a natural evolution of their friendship. He describes Therese’s work as timeless and contemporary, a part of “an imagined world that has come into reality.”

Wareco’s six-piece collection is not merely made out of rattan but is also intentionally forged with other materials like metal and glass, as a sort of reinforcement.

“It’s as if I am given permission to shape or if the bend is not possible then their limitations are set”

This is partly because Wareco is a one-woman team, though that doesn’t mean Regalado’s a lone island of ideas. She admits despite a sense of stolid self-reliance, “It’s hard to work on stuff when you’re only talking to yourself.”

Over the course of the last two years, she’s worked with clients on custom furniture orders and collaborated with friends such as designer Carl Jan Cruz to create one-offs. Last year, the two reimagined the iconic Ishinomaki stool from Japanese furniture brand Ishinomaki Lab to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Therese darkened the stool’s light finish and gave it red streaks to match the cushion made out of Cruz’s studio-developed rib gabao fabric.

“She’s always game, doing her thing without being imposing… and very open to things,” Cruz said of Regalado. When he reached out to her, he said it came out of knowing each other’s expertise, a natural evolution of their friendship. He describes Therese’s work as timeless and contemporary, a part of “an imagined world that has come into reality.”

In July, she unveiled a custom creation, a stainless steel seat with provisional slots on each side for bent bamboo strips. The hypermobile cartridge seat, as it came to be called, now warms up local streetwear brand Fortune WWD’s minimalist Makati outpost.

“When one works with rattan or uway, you use your entire body to bend until the point where it breaks, really seeing what the limitations of that specific material are.”

The rattan used to make Wareco pieces are sourced from and assembled in Negros Island, an ode to Therese’s roots. Photo courtesy of Wareco

The rattan used to make Wareco pieces are sourced from and assembled in Negros Island, an ode to Therese’s roots. Photo courtesy of Wareco

Therese’s love of furniture making also stems from her love of working with craftsmen, with whom she’d worked intensively during her time as a production manager. “The level of experience and mastery they have with their hands is so interesting to witness and encourage,” she said.

For the last few months, she’s worked with craftsmen anew, this time in Dumaguete and Bacolod—which is five to six hours apart by land—to work on a new collection for Wareco coming out this month. It’s an ode to Therese’s hometown in Negros, where its key materials are abundant and thus utilized in what was once a booming industry: rattan.

Unlike the pliant bamboo that can stand its own ground, rattan, a climbing palm species, depends on sturdier trees, slithering its way past the forest canopy for the warmth of sunlight. Still, rattan is hardy and also adaptable. It is, after all, a collection of fibers condensed into a long and winding stem that can grow up to hundreds of meters.

The Philippines is a known exporter of rattan as the vine grows in abundance in multiple parts of the country, so much so that one of its monikers is Manila cane. There are over 64 known rattan species that grow locally. Out of these, only three are favored by furniture makers for their abundance in nature as well as their girthy diameter that can reach two centimeters or more.

“I always want to start with something impossible.”

“When one works with rattan or uway (its local name), you use your entire body to bend until the point where it breaks, really seeing what the limitations of that specific material are,” Therese said. But even the pliable rattan has its limits. Most furniture made out of this indigenous material that we see now—including a 40-year-old screw-less(!) set of dining chairs at the Regalado house—are products of this time-tested tinkering with the bounds of rattan’s flexibility. With Wareco, Therese tries to surpass both the limits of the plant and of creativity.

“I always want to start with something impossible,” she said, often beginning with a sketch that puzzles and challenges craftsmen used to traditional ways of working within rattan’s range. “Because there will always be options for the workaround where we have interesting solutions we can play around with.”

Pictured here is the armchair made with rattan, stainless steel back, and metal hardware. Photo by Colin Dancel for Wareco

The six-piece collection available for pre-order on Wareco’s website until October consists of an armchair, a side chair, a stool, a three-tiered shelf, three tables of varying heights and widths, and a lamp. They are not merely made out of rattan but are also intentionally forged with other materials. Therese said of the armchair inspired by director’s chairs with a fluid-looking stainless steel backrest: “I wanted the steel to act like fabric, slightly bent on the back for comfort and cut on the sides as if it’s pulled by screws.”

Clockwise from left: Stool, cabinet, lampara, armchair, wav table, and side chair. Photo by Colin Dancel for Wareco

Clockwise from left: Stool, cabinet, lampara, armchair, wav table, and side chair. Photo by Colin Dancel for Wareco

The same mirrored-finish metal also found its way as legs on the side chair and as a stand for the lamp where two complementary curved rattan shades hang. The stool, meanwhile, is designed so that the rattan poles look like tubes of steel lined up and stacked to form a seat. They are bound together by metal screws and meant to be taken apart into five flat pieces for easy transport.

In this manner, metal acts as a reinforcement to rattan that’s been pushed beyond its limits. “When I had fabricated the stainless steel with this collection I was thinking of connecting materials at their sturdiest points to supplement the whole. How and where to brace with the least amount of intrusion,” Therese explained.

The Wareco wav table has legs made with curved rattan made to look like a continuous loop reinforced with stainless steel spokes. They support a security glass top.

The metal back rest on the armchair is fabricated to look almost like liquid silver to complement the curves of the rattan body. Photos by Colin Dancel for Wareco

The Wareco wav table has legs made with curved rattan made to look like a continuous loop reinforced with stainless steel spokes. They support a security glass top.

The metal back rest on the armchair is fabricated to look almost like liquid silver to complement the curves of the rattan body. Photos by Colin Dancel for Wareco

The tables and the shelf, other than having masterfully curved rattan legs and frames, have glass tops, but not just any ordinary glass. For these, Therese used shatter-resistant security glass reinforced with wire for its translucence and texture.

One of rattan furniture’s distinguishing features is its natural finish, a product of drying that renders the cane a color akin to local candies balikutsa and tira-tira’s pale warmth. Few craftsmen are brave enough to show the lengths through which rattan has been subjected to achieve Fibonacciesque curves—for one, heat that enables its fibers to be malleable enough but also results in distinctive burn marks. Still, fewer are those like Therese who amplifies these cheetah-like spots and paints the canes back to their wild green hue resembling her first love: bamboo.

The rattan and bamboo stool can be taken apart into five flat pieces for easy transport. Photo by Colin Dancel for Wareco

The rattan and bamboo stool can be taken apart into five flat pieces for easy transport. Photo by Colin Dancel for Wareco

The rattan and bamboo stool can be taken apart into five flat pieces for easy transport. Photo by Colin Dancel for Wareco

As we were wrapping the shoot at her house, she asks us if she should call the verdant finish “tupig” after the charcoal-grilled, banana leaf-wrapped rice cake embedded with young coconut strips from northwestern Luzon. Her other option was “tosta” or toasted. She’s still pondering it through, brushing off a remark from a friend who said maybe she was hungry when she thought of painting the rattan a cool green last minute. Maybe she’ll ask her trusty tukô for advice.

One thing Therese is sure of is Wareco’s natural evolution. The name was originally intended to connote different kinds of wares: software, hardware, homeware, you name it. (She’s also comfortable pronouncing it as “wa-rê-co,” like a Japanese word). So far, she’s crossed out two—three if you count fabric as software—but she’s not stopping there. “I still plan to continue this by making objects with craftsmen in varying sectors of expertise.” ●

Part I of III of Nolisoli.ph’s Makers Special

All pieces are available for pre-order at wareco.info

Cover photography by Rob Frogoso
Creative direction by Nimu Muallam
Art direction by Levenspeil Sangalang
Produced by Christian San Jose

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