Buyco Heirlooms, Antiques and Arts & Crafts opens today
MANILA, Philippines - Antiques row’s best-kept secret will reveal itself this week. Buyco Heirlooms, Antiques and Arts & Crafts opens today at Kamagong cor. Banuyo Sts. in San Antonio Village, Makati. Owned and operated by Gedeon Buyco and his mother, the former Florentina Velez Lucasan, the showroom is an updated reboot of the Buycos’ former Memorabilia Arts & Crafts which occupied nearly the entire third floor of the Atrium building in Makati Avenue from the early ‘80s till ‘98.
The Buycos, originally from Occidental Negros, started the business in their native Bacolod in 1959 with Gedeon’s aunt Elena Lucasan Ortaliz who ran a jewelry store that made available flawless diamonds, as well as furniture pieces with semi-precious stone inlays and rare Ching Dynasty porcelain jars to affluent Negrense sugar barons.
The new Buyco showroom in Makati occupies a two-storey building with a total area of 650 sq.m. The ground floor houses big-ticket items like tables, armoires, chests and opium beds and Gedeon’s extensive collection of blue-and-white jars. The second floor gallery displays accent pieces like Nepalese masks, serving trays, bird cages, chandeliers, and grandfather’s clocks. Talking points are a bronze Buddha with silver inlay and a150-year-old Chinese desk alongside a set of Ming Dynasty water jars that took Gedeon two years to complete.
Buyco Heirlooms, Antiques and Arts & Crafts is located at 9047 Kamagong St. cor. Banuyo St., in San Antonio Village, Makati. For inquiries, call (02)403-3021.
