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Westerners refer to the "mysterious East" can it be because they cannot understand how Orientals with their hearty, zesty love for color, clutter, and noise, can also delight in all that is serene and quiet?
Their flair for rituals and ceremonies, fireworks and festivals, their appetite for opulence and, to a certain extent, decadent excess notwithstanding, Orientals are still and above all the world's best exponent of meditation. Side by side with their flamboyant exuberance in celebration of life's sensual and sensate pleasures, physical and material, they display their unchallenged expertise in the ability to withdraw from the hustle and bustle, retiring to the tranquility of a Buddhist temple, for instance, whose extravagant decor always leaves the Western visitor gaping and gasping; or to that perennial clump of willow trees bending over the ubiquitous pond, where abundant nature gives birth to the much-desired leaness of spirit envied by those who possess much but have little; or to the heart of stillness as they watch in silence the moon, cherry blossoms, or the blooming of the five-petalled lotus at midnight.
These thoughts came to me after I saw an exhibition of interior designs done in the Oriental manner by Jun Alday, a young Filipino decorator who has gone places with the famous Dale Keller and has found his place: that Asia is where it all started, where the action
(and the fashion) is, and where it will all end.
After six years working in Athens, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and New York and elsewhere, where he helped the rich and the beautiful decorate their homes and offices, Jun has come to the conclusion that the East is not only mysterious, it is beautiful and best. Why he wonders, is Manila so Western in its interior design concepts?
At his show, which he called East by Southeast in deference to the three countries to which he paid tribure -- China, Thailand, and the Philippines -- Alday assembled three sets of ideas, three design concepts for each country, to show how wonderful it is to look East and live East.
A mood of mellowness pervaded his sets, the soft, hushed look enhanced by the simplicity with which the clutter was arranged. And although, as your favorite interior designer will tell you, any room is a result of accumulated-as-you-go-along finds (an old vase picked up ages ago suddenly finds its soul-mate lamp five years later) there were few ideas I thought I could steal from Alday and pass on to readers who are always regaled by glossy magazine photos of houses beautiful but just don't have the money, the means or the longed-for millionaire fairy godmother.
Here are three ideas that cost little but for which Alday would charge a small fortune if he were to work for you:
1. In a huge dama juana,* stick in a few lotus buds, filling enough water in the jar to feed the buds and to bring out the silvery quality of water. Around the dama juana arrange a circle of votive lights. The effect is charming and stunning in the dark, more so if the whole arrangement is done on a circular sheet of glass or its facsimiles.
2. The cheapest but chic-est chandelier is yours for a song -- if you can sing for your anahaw leaves. Anyhow take, six or seven palm fronds, the bigger the better, spray them with gold paint, and hang each with nylon thread or invisible wire from the ceiling, grouping the anahaw fronds nonchalantly. A masterpice of ingenuity.
3. Lampshades can be a bore, specifically since every lampshade you see is standing on a table. But this Jun Alday idea is a floor show all its own. Open three Chinese peasants umbrellas, leave them on the floor, close to one another, and place six or nine votive lights behind the cluster of umbrellas. What you get is pure, gentle enchantment straight out of the fabled bedchambers of Old Cathay.
