IN HIS home in Quezon City, writer, director, award-winning playwright, and passionate primitive-art collector and dealer Floy Quintos lives alone.

But he?s never quite alone. The shelves and tables are decked with a phalanx of figures, carvings ? including a stunning, wild-haired Virgin Mary ? and the ubiquitous star of the show, his bulol or carved wooden granary gods, in a variety of incarnations.

Doesn?t he worry that, with all these ancient objects, he may also be bringing home a spirit or two?

?Okay lang,? Quintos says. ?It doesn?t bother me. I like to think we communicate in an animistic way, and they know they?ve found a home. On the other hand, I always have my St. Benedict medal. Awa ng Diyos, there haven?t been incidents. If the object knows that you love it, it will love you back.?

It?s a legitimate question, as the bulol is, after all, truly of the spirit world. In fact, Quintos explains, as he launches into a riveting session of Bulol 101, for the Ifugao, the bulol and the process of its creation are part of myth in their oral tradition.

He tells the lovely legend of an epic hero, Humidhid, who came upon a narra tree making a tremendous noise in the middle of the forest.

?The villagers asked the tree, ?What do you want to be, a hagabi [a prestige bench]? A bowl? A house?? The tree continued making noise. Finally they asked, ?Do you want to be a bulol?? And then the tree was quiet. So they felled the tree, and made a bulol.?

Bulol also refers to figures used for death, healing, even sorcery and war rituals, Quintos says. A souvenir of the sacrifice, like the feather of a dead chicken, may adorn the figure, along with the unmistakable color of sacrificial blood that has been poured over it for generations. There are even bulol with their faces in their hands, like Rodin?s ?Thinker.?

?You have to remember that these priests were plied with wine as they chanted for prolonged periods,? Quintos says, ?so that?s a very accurate posture.?

Avid scholar

The oldest bulol are named, Quintos recounts, often after certain powers they have displayed or feats they have performed, much like the miracles associated with saints.

Thus, these artworks come with fascinating stories, which are a big part of what draws this avid scholar.

?My other hobby is buying the books and papers and old material that accompany them, the arcane ? that?s what makes it more than an object.?

Quintos introduces us to Buikot of Barrio Bito in Ifugao, a 17th-century bulol occupying a place of honor on his shelf, which allegedly survived after the Japanese tried to hack it to pieces and burn it.

Even the creation of a bulol is a mystical process, Quintos says.

?These were made by old men, created in isolation in the forest, during a trance-like state that lasted as long as 30 days, during which time they had no food, no drink, no sex. That?s why they were worth a lot. And the payment was never in money. For every phase of the creation, from finding the tree to installing the bulol, the rich patron who commissioned the piece would have to feed the entire village!?

No more ?bulol?

Sadly, Quintos says, with the pure Ifugao culture slowly dying, there are really no old bulol to be found anymore. ?Collectors now are just regurgitating stuff they don?t want, pieces they bought early on.?

Aside from one important bulol, which he knows to be still in its original home site, ?most of the best ones are now in Paris, Brussels, Manila.?

And how did that happen?

?Foreigners who first began studying Indonesian primitive art made the connection, and came here because they knew what they were looking for,? Quintos explains.

Some proof: the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva has a bulol that was carbon-dated and determined to be from the 16th century, the oldest proven extant piece.

Last December, a 16th-century bulol that had been at the Linden Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, since 1901 was sold at Sotheby?s for 20,000 euros, and the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, which Quintos works with, is planning a major show on Philippine tribal art in 2010.

From ignorance

That?s why Quintos calls it a ?cop-out? when people label such art ?crude,? because it?s an observation that comes primarily from ignorance. ?Crude, primitive? Look at it as a sculptural form ? the volume in the legs, the broadness in the back...?

After all these years, Quintos can now tell from sight what is good and what isn?t. ?It?s the same thing with santos and paintings ? there?s a bad Borlongan and a very good Borlongan; a bad Inmaculada, and a magnificent Inmaculada. It?s the hierarchy of values. Not every carver was a genius.?

It also helps that Quintos has been visiting antique stores since he was a child, accompanying his grandmother to Mabini or getting lost in Marbey, the furniture market in Baguio, where his family had a summer house.

?Today Marbey is full of beauticians, but before, it was magical,? he sighs. ?It smelled old, and the cream of the dealers was there ? Pinky Garcia Magsino, Eddie Marcelo, the Tandoc brothers. It was the center of the trade for Igorot as well as Spanish colonial stuff from Ilocos ? none of which I could afford. I was just a student, so I just drooled.?

First purchase

Eventually, Quintos befriended some dealers, and made his first tribal ?purchases of substance.? One is a rather morbid trophy, a real human jawbone used as a gong handle, which he bought from Roland Go for P250.

?They would use the jawbone of a beheaded enemy, and the soul of the victim was supposed to give the gong more resonance,? Quintos explains, delicately cradling the piece. ?Look at this beautiful patina!?

The other purchase, from Eddie Marcelo, is less morbid ? a tattoo needle shaped like a man holding a severed head. It came with a matching finely woven basket, and cost P150.

?But after that, I couldn?t buy anything anymore, not even strawberries,? he says with a laugh. ?Then my mother would ask, ?Ano ba ?yan??

?I don?t know what draws me to them. Maybe I react to it in a different way, in a primordial way? I like unrarified art; between a santo like that? ? he points to his wooden Virgin ? ?and one that?s a Barbie doll, I?ll take that any time. I just have this tendency against over-refinement.?

Today, Quintos, 48, divides his time between his successful Mabini antique shop, Deus, and his writing. Sadly, though, although ?there is a network of relatively young collectors like us, this may just stop at our generation. There?s nothing more for younger collectors to be exposed to.?