THE GO family’s living room and dining room also serve as a showroom for their own craft in an aptly named enterprise called Pako Ph — “pako” is Filipino for “nail” — which focuses on custom furniture, restoration, and reproduction.
A look through the living room shows pieces topped with coral (made back when it was still legal), tables covered in shagreen, a massive table with a top of etched glass, and a comfortable chair with its legs carved to look like rope.
Cherry Go, one of Pako’s founders, traces her own experience in furniture back to the 1980s, but the family’s association with it goes back further to her grandfather who exported raw materials for rattan furniture. It was Ms. Go’s father who expanded the business into actually making rattan furniture, culminating in his daughter moving into the creation of wood furniture. When she learned the craft, she expanded into restoring antiques.
Her son, Pierre Go, was drawn into the family business. He studied architecture in the University of the Philippines before joining a prestigious firm — but he found himself working in his mother’s shop so often that he finally decided to join the family business full-time.
“I’m still learning a lot, especially from my mom,” he told BusinessWorld last week.
The work of the mother-son duo is interesting: while she focuses on more classic pieces, he experiments with unusual materials such as dyed elastic garter more often used in garments, resulting in something more contemporary, or, dare we say, avant-garde.
“On my end, it’s very encouraging,” said Mr. Go of the family’s long history with furniture, “because a lot of the backbone is there. The structure is there. When we start putting in new ideas, a lot of the headaches solve themselves, or you kind of make solutions from that.
“It’s very enriching to come from that sort of background.”
Ms. Go walked over to a console with French Empire details displayed in her dining room, along with wall sconces in brass that she has managed to restore. “We can do it for you — anything.”
As in the case of the coral table, whose restoration can be difficult because their materials have now been made illegal or difficult to trade, they find a way to work around it. Ms. Go says that for materials in antiques that are now hard to procure, she can have them customized or come up with a substitute in order to make a piece breathe again.
She does say that not all furniture was meant to be restored. “When it’s old furniture, it has to be solid,” she said, citing that it must be made of hardwood like narra or mahogany. Otherwise, “If it’s in plywood, it’s not ‘sulit’ (worth it) to restore that.”
“It does really start with quality of material that’s being sent,” said Mr. Go. “If it was previously well-made, that can be restored. You want to preserve maybe the craft of it, or preserve some sort of material, or preserve whatever memory you have of it. You just kind of bring in something fresh.”
In a world of fast fashion, and now, even fast furniture, people can just throw away any old thing and just buy something new.
“That depends on the client’s mentality, I guess. If you buy something off the rack, there’s really nothing wrong with it. But there’s always value in customized design pieces. There’s always something to be said when something is made for you,” he said. “When something’s made for you, it always just feels right for you.” — Joseph L. Garcia
To contact Pako PH, call 0917-501-7778, e-mail pakoph.info@gmail.com, or visit https://www.instagram.com/pako__ph or www.facebook.com/pg/Pako-PH.
