An Environmentally Friendly Alternative Method of Producing Religious Images for Philippine Holy Week Tableaus

Abstract

This paper presents a proposed process of making Philippine Holy Week sacred images from clay, plaster, and paper fiber instead of the more precious wood from the country's shrinking forests. This paper theoretically established the durability of the product and environmental soundness of this alternative process compared to the traditional wood carving or the more recent resin casting by thoroughly describing this alternative process by understanding the notion of durability based on the traditionally preferred woods among santeros, by understanding the conservation status of these preferred woods, and by undertaking comparative calculations of the environmental impacts of the productions of the three current alternatives. This paper is significant because it proposes a sustainable way of assuring the continued existence of the Filipino cultural tradition of making and presenting Holy Week images.