The Company
BrushArt™ is a trademark of Philippine Finecrafts Export (PFE), a handicraft trading company owned by Englishman Paul Holme, and operating since 1979. Paul is originally from London , and is the designer and, through PFE, the sole distributor of the BrushArt™ line.
PFE banks with the Bank of Commerce, Paseo de Roxas branch (fax: 632-815-4279, ph: 632-817-1451) and has done so since it began business.
Until 1994, we exported chiefly baskets, pottery and furniture. Then, concerned about dwindling supplies of wood, rattan, and the other staples of the handicraft industry, as well as increasing competition from neighboring Asian countries, we began searching for more plentiful, renewable and environmentally friendly materials with which to work. Our BrushArt™ line, started in 1996, is the result. Since then, we have gradually incorporated new materials and techniques which have broadened the range, and helped gain it a reputation for quality , innovation and design excellence in markets from Western Europe, through America , to East Asia.
We now have a truly marvelous, exciting, and constantly growing collection; one which we hope will bring you as much pleasure - and success - as it has brought us.
Our Philosophy
We have been paying lip service to conservation since the 1960's, but fifty years on we're still logging and burning and poisoning and fishing and dumping until we stand at the very brink of ecological catastrophe. Doubtless this is a stage, like the "terrible two's", we all have to go through. But now it's about time we honored our parent - Mother Earth - in deed as well as in word. What’s holding us back?
Some say that 'progress' - their own or their nation's - is paramount, so ecological destruction must be tolerated. Some say "I am just one among billions! What possible difference can my behavior make?" Some say humanity is intrinsically evil, so let's hasten it to its well-deserved end by encouraging all this destruction. And some again say "If I am alone in my good behavior I am simply subsidizing - and therefore prolonging - the thoughtless behavior of others."
All of these excuses betray the same defect; a lack of 'amor propre' : the proper, appropriate, natural love for our Mother Earth - a love which all aboriginal peoples share, but which we forgot somewhere on the way to the bank. Original peoples don't just treat our Earth well because it's in their best interests to do so. They treat her well because they love her. There is absolutely no calculation in this. Respect for the Earth arises from the heart; it is not manufactured in the head.
As children of the Earth we all contain within us
the moral imperative to embrace a lifestyle
that does not compromise the future
for the sake of the present.
The Aborigines of Australia put it more simply: "Touch the earth lightly!"
My behavior is the measure of my morality, regardless of what others do. I will not join others in harming the world, because I know that to do so will bring me no lasting satisfaction. I shan't feel that I'm “missing out", or that I am sacrificing for them; I am simply expressing my values as, presumably, they are expressing theirs.
While trying not to be obsessive about it (the hot glue we use is plastic!), the world of BrushArt™ represents a sincere attempt to live by this precept.
Paul Holme - 15 August, 2005 |
