Workspace:Discover BARMM

Workspaces

BetterBARMM

60 crafts · 13 peoples

Living Crafts
of the Bangsamoro

What the region weaves, casts and carves: where each piece is made, who still makes it, and where a visitor can watch it made or buy it from the hands that made it.

The cover of Pusaka: inaul, okir, a kris hilt, tepo weaving and the Grand Mosque of Cotabato City

From the Bangsamoro Commission for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage

Pusaka

Embodying Prestige of the BARMM’s Cultural Properties

The commission’s own coffee-table book of the region’s heritage, province by province: 78 cultural items, from the inaul and the brassware of Maguindanao to the okir and torogan of Lanao, Yakan tennun, and the tepo mats and boats of Tawi-Tawi.

cultural items
78 cultural items
provinces
5 provinces
pages
118 pages
Read the book PDF, 17 MBOn the commission’s site

Posted by the commission in February 2025, it still includes Sulu, which the Supreme Court ruled out of BARMM in 2024. For children, the commission also publishes Landung, a colouring book of the same heritage.

Textiles

Dress

Mats

Basketry

Brass

Pottery

Instruments

Carving

Ornaments

Blades

Boats

Where they are made

Each dot is a town a source names; the larger, the more crafts made there. A faint dot holds the crafts whose town no source names, on their province.

Pick a dot, or a town below.

Where to buy

Fairs, centres and shops where these crafts are sold, each as dated as its source. Check before you travel.

  • Bangsamoro Ramadhan Trade Fair

    Bangsamoro Government Center, Cotabato City

    MTIT's annual month-long fair runs through Ramadhan (the 2026 edition opened on 16 February with 60 MSMEs); it sells mostly halal food but also handcrafted items and gift items, though no specific crafts are named.

    Crafts of many kinds

    Source, February 2026

  • Shariff Kabunsuan Festival Agri-Trade Fair

    Bangsamoro Government Center, Cotabato City

    A 3-day fair held in mid-December during the Shariff Kabunsuan Festival (16–18 December in 2024), where 20 cooperatives sold local products including cultural attire.

    Crafts of many kinds

    Source, December 2024

  • Lami-Lamihan Festival Tourism Trade Fair and Gallery Walk

    Barangay Malinis, Lamitan City, Basilan

    MTIT-Basilan's trade fair for local producers and artisans, held during Lamitan's late-June Lami-Lamihan Festival (opened 22 June 2026); no specific crafts are listed.

    Crafts of many kinds

    Source, June 2026

  • Badjao weaving community (Badjao Village)

    Bongao, Tawi-Tawi

    A stilt village where Sama/Badjao women weave colourful pandan tepo mats and sell them to visitors.

    Sama pandan mat

    Source, March 2025

  • Inaul Expo at the Inaul Festival

    Buluan, Maguindanao del Sur

    During the festival, held each February in Buluan since 2017, inaul from several towns is shown and sold, along with shawls, headscarves and bags; the sources date from before Maguindanao was split, and no edition after 2019 is confirmed here.

    Inaul

    Source, March 2019

  • Provincial Women Center (inaul weaving section)

    Buluan, Maguindanao del Sur

    A centre run by the provincial government where a women's group weaves, manages and exhibits inaul products; the source predates the 2022 split of Maguindanao, so its current status is unconfirmed.

    Inaul

    Source, February 2018

  • GAMABA Weaving Center and Ambalang Museum

    Lamitan City, Basilan

    A School of Living Tradition linked to master weaver Ambalang Ausalin, where weavers quoted a visitor a price for a tennun piece; a weaving centre and museum under this name were inaugurated in June 2024.

    Yakan weaving

    Source, November 2021

  • Datu Dizal Cultural Center

    Lamitan City, Basilan

    Lamitan named Yakan fabric its One Town, One Product, and the city set up this centre to house the weaving industry (2013 source, current status unconfirmed).

    Yakan weaving

    Source, August 2013

  • Maranao Collectible Service Cooperative (Maranao Collectibles)

    Marawi City, Lanao del Sur

    A cooperative of about 80 mostly women artisans formed after the 2017 siege, which sells langkit by the metre, takes orders and works with distributors.

    Malong a landap, Langkit

    Source, October 2022

  • MSU-Marawi Pasalubong Center

    Marawi City, Lanao del Sur

    Stocks The Meranaw Hijab collections, including one inspired by langkit; it is the only crafts-adjacent stock confirmed, so other Meranaw crafts are unverified.

    Crafts of many kinds

    Source, December 2024

  • Ayuda Badjao Project

    Maasin, Zamboanga City (outside BARMM)

    a livelihood project for Badjao families, founded in 2000, that sells the women's tepo mats as souvenirs.

    Sama pandan mat

    Source, October 2014

  • Yuchengco Museum shop (online)

    Makati City (outside BARMM)

    a museum shop selling Yakan table runners described as woven by Yakan in Basilan and Zamboanga.

    Yakan weaving

    Source, October 2026

  • Yakan Weaving Village (Yakan Village Weaving Center)

    Upper Calarian, Zamboanga City (outside BARMM)

    a 1974 settlement of Yakan families from Basilan with about ten or more shops selling woven polos, bags and pouches; a 2013 blog (pinasmuna.com) says Lamitan-made fabric is shipped here for sale.

    Yakan weaving, Yakan dress

    Source, April 2024

When to go

The festivals where these crafts are shown, worn and sold.

  • February

    Inaul Festival

    Buluan, Maguindanao del Sur

    Started in 2017 to promote inaul; features the Kapaginaul weaving competition, inaul gowns, a search for the oldest inaul and a trade expo. Reporting found covers 2017–2019.

    Source

  • June

    Lami-Lamihan Festival

    Lamitan City, Basilan

    Opens on June 26 at the Datu Kalun Shrine; a celebration of Yakan culture with a parade in hand-woven Yakan attire. 2025 was its 42nd year.

    Source

  • December

    Shariff Kabunsuan Festival

    Cotabato City

    Mid-December; highlight is the Guinakit fluvial parade on December 19 along the Rio Grande de Mindanao, with ornately adorned boats once used by royal families.

    Source

  • August

    Langkit Festival

    Marawi City, Lanao del Sur

    Week-long city charter celebration named after the langkit, with barangay booths, kulintang playing and a langkit competition.

    Source

  • April

    Okir Art Exhibit

    Cagayan de Oro (outside BARMM)

    BARMM trade ministry exhibit of Maranao baul, tapestries, paintings and okir jewellery; held in April 2024.

    Source

  • October

    National Arts and Crafts Fair

    SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City (outside BARMM)

    National crafts fair where a pandan mat weaver from Mapun, Tawi-Tawi, wove at her booth in 2025.

    Source

Help for makers

What the region’s offices list for the people who weave, cast and carve: teaching, registering a workshop, better tools, a table at a fair.

A craft we have missed?

Or a maker, a shop, a price or a photo of your own. Send it with a source; it is checked before it goes up, and credited to you if you like.

Send it

Every fact here is linked to the page it came from. Photos are from Wikimedia Commons under free licences, or from the commission’s book Pusaka, which its site places in the public domain; each is credited on the photo. Items cited to Pusaka come from the book, by page.

Get involved

Public records get betterwhen people check them.

Spotted an error, or have a document worth adding? Every correction and every source makes the record stronger — and the official source is always right where we are wrong.

Crafts of the Bangsamoro·Basketry

Teduray · Maguindanao del Norte

Monom basketry

monom (Teduray)

Monom is the Teduray tradition of weaving baskets and hats from bamboo, rattan and nito, carried on in the uplands of Upi, South Upi and parts of Datu Blah Sinsuat. The Teduray have a word for every part of a basket, every step of the work and every design, and a 1994 encyclopedia ranks them among the most accomplished basket weavers of the country's cultural communities.

Made in
Upi, South Upi, Datu Blah Sinsuat, Maguindanao del Norte
Materials
Pawa, a thin and light bamboo (genus Bambusa); teel, the Teduray word for uway rattan (genus Calamus), for the rims; nito (Lygodium circinnatum), a climbing fern, to sew the rims. The black colour, buring, is soot (in 2014, from a small block of burnt tyre rubber) fixed with the sap of camote leaves; weavers now also use bright synthetic dyes.
Worn or used
The biton is a squarish storage and carrying basket for harvested corn, rice and vegetables, carried on the back with a strap across the forehead to leave both hands free; fitted with a cover it becomes the senafeng, used to store seeds and grain. Other pieces are the tefaya winnowing basket, the tafisan strainer, the laba food cover and the sayaf, a shallow conical hat worn by men and women against the sun. From the 1960s many baskets were also made for tourist and export buyers.
Monom basketry
No freely licensed photo of it found yet.

More like it

Sayap and buyangMaguindanaon · Maguindanao

How it is made

Bamboo is harvested on moonless days so that it will not dry-rot. Nito is split in four with the thumbnail and drawn through a hole punched with a pointed tool (kusu) in a sardine-can lid until every strand is the same width, a step called sangaten. Bamboo strips are blackened by brushing on powdered soot with a bundle of camote leaves, whose sap fixes the colour, and the black strips are woven with natural ones into two-toned patterns; an older account says the bamboo is smoked black before splitting. Nested sets of up to 12 planter baskets are made without a mould and still fit snugly one inside the next.

Motifs

  • dau t'beli, leaf pattern
  • bukag timon, cucumber seeds
  • along tudok, shadow of the mountain
  • drumata, eyes of the pineapple
  • sebanga igor, an animal biting the tail of another, an interlocking design
  • doh tuwol, a macopa seed cut in half
  • belinsuwang, the movement of a rocking chair
  • moto teniboh, may only be woven by someone who has killed another person
  • taang-taangan, may only be woven by someone who ran off with another person's spouse
  • human figures, taboo; weaving them is believed to bring bad luck

Makers

  • BCPCH Cultural Master 2024

    Perlita B. Laugan

    South Upi

    Teduray master weaver from South Upi, recognised by the BCPCH as Cultural Master for monom weaving in 2024; describes herself as the sixth generation of sayaf weavers and led a sayaf-making workshop at the Bangsamoro Museum in February 2026.

    Source

  • Lencio T. Arig

    Barangay kagawad of Romonggaub; women wove backpacks to order at his house when SunStar visited in 2014.

    Source

  • Upi Monom

    Teduray people's organisation in South Upi that received 2 handloom units from the Ministry of Trade, Investments and Tourism in March 2026.

    Source

Where it is made

Each town opens in the Directory: its mayor, its offices and how to reach them.

Heritage

  • Taught in a School of Living Traditions, BCPCH. Monom, hand-sewn weaving in bamboo, rattan and nito strips is one of the workshops in BCPCH's School of Living Traditions. Source

Where to see it

  • Bangsamoro Museum

    Cotabato City

    Held a Monom Sayaf lecture-demonstration and hands-on workshop for Teduray students on its 7th anniversary, February 2026.

    Source

Where to buy it

No shop, fair or cooperative selling it found in a source yet.

While you are there

Read more

Know more about the Monom basketry?

A maker, a place to buy it, a price, a photo you took, or a correction. Send it with a source and it is checked before it goes up.

Send it

More from the region

Drawing the map…

Gathering the records, sources and links.