Okir is carved ornament, not drawn ornament. Maranao panday cut it in shallow relief into the hardwood of the torogan — the datu's great house — then painted the field black and brought the raised scrollwork up in green, chrome yellow, oxide red and sky blue. The wing-shaped panolong beam is where it is loudest: a naga serpent's S-curve running the whole length of the beam, pako rabong fronds curling out of it, never mirrored.

This system takes the beam literally. The page is the black field. Everything that reads as content sits above it with a hard cut shadow, the way a chisel leaves an edge. Colour alternates along a line instead of filling a shape, borders are the rectilinear okir a bae register, and the ornament runs out to the edge rather than sitting inside a margin.