Florence Bauing

Dyeing Director

Narda’s Dyeing Director, Florence Bauing, have been with Narda’s for 32 years. She’s from Besao, Mountain Province but spent her teenage years in Baler, Aurora helping out her aunt in her grocery store and cooking meals for the kitchenette. She moved to La Trinidad, Benguet when her grandmother got tired of her just doing “mantaw”, hanging out with friends, and applied her to Narda’s.

She started in the dyeing department without prior experience but enjoyed it ever since. She enjoyed dyeing that much it never occurred to her to learn weaving. She was trained well by Narda’s but her most nerve wracking experience was her first time to do the process by herself. Her greatest fear is not to get the right color correctly despite the inherent difficulty of the traditional process. She has no problem handling natural dyes except for indigo. Among the commercial dyes, she finds handling taupe challenging. She’s been constantly tested with tying problems. But these challenges make her enjoy her work more. And she never given up her passion for cooking so she bakes and make jams from our farms produce.

She may not be aware of her contribution in preserving our Cordilleran hand weaving tradition, but it’s surely is remarkable. Through her years with Narda’s, for her, it’s just something that has to be done, basking not in her extraordinary cultural contribution. But maybe her more meaningful contribution is teaching the tradition to the next generation.

She has a 29 year-old nurse and a 26 year-old chef. Both are fine young men she and her husband brought up very well.