Philippine Abacá Knitted Lace Scarf: When Cordage Fiber Becomes Loops
Research and writing: DDUJA KNIT
Abacá calls rope to mind before it calls up a scarf. Yet the Cleveland Museum of Art holds a long, narrow lace scarf—about 122 cm by 14 cm—classified as Philippine work from about 1910–23. Its technique is recorded as knitted.[1] How did a fiber often used for cordage become an open, flexible-looking surface? One museum photograph cannot reconstruct the maker’s hands. Read beside Philippine periodicals from the object’s era and present-day fiber records, however, it offers a precise lesson in keeping material, structure, and speculation apart.
A question mark on the object card
The accession number is 1923.864 and the title is Lace Scarf. The museum writes its technique and medium as “abacá fiber(?); knitted”.[1] The question mark matters: the fiber identification is qualified. A possible connection to the Eastern Visayas or Bicol is similarly provisional, not an identified workshop. The maker’s name, needle type, yarn preparation, and stitch count do not appear in the record. Myrta Leonora Jones appears in the provenance as the person who gave the object to the museum; that is not evidence that she made it.[1]
The photograph establishes a strip far longer than it is wide. Repeating openings run along its middle, denser bands frame them above and below, and the outer edges undulate into small scallops. We can describe how the open center and its border divide the surface. The overall view does not reliably resolve every loop’s direction, an exact repeat, or the way the edges were shaped. “Lace” names an open surface, while knitting, crochet, bobbin lace, needle lace, and knotting are different ways to make one. Here the museum explicitly says knitted. We can use that classification without inventing the needle size or a working pattern from a single overall view.
From cordage fiber to cloth
Abacá is the fiber of Musa textilis. The Philippine national standard issued in 2016 distinguishes hand-stripped from machine-assisted fiber extraction and describes length, thickness, texture, and other features used in grading.[5] That standard is a way to understand the material today; it is not an inspection sheet for a scarf made a century earlier. We do not know what grade its maker selected.
The National Museum of the Philippines places abacá among the fibers used in Philippine cloth. Its Butuan textile exhibition describes cloth woven from abacá.[6][7] This is the crucial distinction. Weaving crosses warp and weft; knitting connects successive loops. Two objects may use the same plant without sharing a technique. A woven textile in the Butuan exhibition is not a diagram of how the Cleveland scarf was made.
What a 1913 school periodical does—and does not—tell us
In 1913, within the scarf’s proposed date range, John F. Minier of the Bureau of Education’s Department of Industrial Information wrote about abacá in The Philippine Craftsman.[2] Rope and twine dominate his account, but he also describes slippers, baskets, bags, and other school craftwork. Near the end, he reports attempts in a few localities to make lace from tied abacá fibers. This is contemporaneous evidence that abacá was being tested beyond cordage and ordinary woven cloth. It does not establish that those experiments were knitted, that this scarf came from a school, or that its maker followed Minier’s examples. His assessment of craft and markets also reflects a U.S. colonial education administration’s viewpoint.
In the same year, supervising teacher Estella M. Murdoch, assisted by Mrs. W. W. Weston, discussed lace instruction and industry in the periodical.[3] Her account distinguishes forms of needle, bobbin, and machine lace. It supplies context for the breadth of the word lace, but neither a pattern nor a named maker for accession 1923.864. A second Cleveland object makes the point visible: a pair of Philippine abacá shoes, accession 1932.650, is specifically classified as macramé knotted lace, not knitting.[8] We must read the structure object by object, even when the material is the same.
What the contemporary fiber photographs can show
PhilFIDA’s 2024 technical guide sets out hand stripping, spindle-assisted extraction, official fiber grades, and uses ranging from cordage to fiber crafts.[4] A photograph of long strands drying in the sun helps us see that raw material is not already a finished knitting yarn. But a modern fiber photograph is no reconstruction of a workshop in the 1910s. The image below is comparative material evidence only; it cannot tell us how the scarf’s own thread was processed or from which locality it came.
The scarf is compelling without pretending that an unusual material makes every part of its construction unknowable. The museum classifies it as knitting; the photograph shows a narrow open surface. A period educational publication records experiments with abacá lace, but no document connects those experiments to this particular scarf. The maker remains unnamed and the question mark after the fiber remains on the card. When reading the next lace pattern, try three separate questions: What is the fiber? Are its openings made by loops, crossed threads, or knots? Which details come from direct sight and which from the collection record? Keeping those answers separate is a practical first step toward reading an unfamiliar textile accurately.
Original sources
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Lace Scarf, 1923.864, c. 1910–23; qualified medium, knitted classification, measurements and provenance.
- John F. Minier, “Abaca: The Rope and Twine Industry,” The Philippine Craftsman (1913), especially pp. 533–534; digitized by the University of the Philippines library.
- Estella M. Murdoch with Mrs. W. W. Weston, “Lace and Lace Making,” The Philippine Craftsman 2.6 (1913); lace techniques and educational discourse.
- PhilFIDA, Abaca Technoguide, 2024; present-day extraction, grades and uses.
- PNS/BAFS 180:2016, Abaca Fiber Grading and Classification; current fiber standard.
- National Museum of the Philippines, Ethnology; collection and fiber context.
- National Museum of the Philippines, Panapton sa Lumad; woven abacá textiles in the Butuan exhibition.
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Pair of Shoes, 1932.650; a contrast in abacá macramé.