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By JADE VERONIQUE YAP, GMA Integrated News
Published May 19, 2025 5:17pm
Select artifacts from the collection of renowned Filipino historian Ambeth Ocampo will be up for auction at Leon Gallery’s Spectacular Mid-Year Auction 2025 on June 7.
As seen in the museum’s auction catalog, the treasures from what Ocampo calls his “Cabinet of Curiosities" that will be up for auction include Emilio Jacinto’s silver quill, which the national hero won as a prize possibly while a student at San Juan de Letran.
“Emilio Jacinto celebrates his 150th birthday in 2025, and the silver quill was a prize as a top poet of his university. In modern terms, being the top influencer, meme-maker of his time,” Leon Gallery consultant Lisa Nakpil told GMA News Online.
According to Nakpil, the silver quill symbolizes the importance of communication in nation-building.
“He was 17 at the time and 18 when he put up the Kalayaan newspaper, recruiting 30,000 Katipunan members. It's a symbol of what communication can do in building a nation,” she said.
Other artifacts from Ocampo’s collection are the Malolos Constitution, which Nakpil described as a “very rare artifact” of the First Philippine Republic. Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo’s tortoiseshell walking stick and personal bank draft, a rare set of Wenceslao E. Retana's "Archivo del Bibliofilo Filipino," and other important books on Philippine history, geography, and botany.
More curiosities include photographs of Jose Rizal and Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, photographs of Juan Luna's “Odalisca” and “Hymén, oh Hyménée" paintings, and paper currency of the Malolos Republic, among others.
Nakpil underscored the significance of these artifacts as markers for people to understand and learn from the past.
“[These are] important because they are touchstones of Filipino history, its heroes and our identity – curated by the country’s most beloved historian, former chair of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines and an international scholar and expert Ambeth R. Ocampo,” she said.
The Spectacular Mid-Year Auction 2025 will be held at the Leon Gallery in Makati City on June 7 at 2 p.m.
—CDC, GMA Integrated News
