Two Old Tiki Carvings, Any History? - General Tiki

A ainokea Member Joined: Mar 29, 2005 Posts: 23	A ainokea Posted posted on Thu, Apr 7, 2005 6:41 AM On 2005-04-06 16:37, Dr_rous wrote: You're correct. The second tiki was carved from the trunk of a Hawaiian tree fern. These are extremely rare nowadays because 1) Tree ferns are now protected in Hawaii, so there's no material to carve new tikis, and 2) old tree fern tikis are hard to find because tree fern wood is highly biodegradable. Tiki Matt: Wow - I'm glad you posted the pic of that second tiki. When I was a kid, we had a similar one in our side yard and I have wondered about it. My parents must have purchased it in the mid to late 70s and it was still in great shape when we moved out in the late 80s. The family that bought our house trashed the tiki (along with everything else that required care in the yard) but that's another story. To expand on what Dr_rous said, the material is also called hapu'u wood. And I've done google searches with permutations of "hapu'u tiki," "hapu'u carving," etc., trying to find anything about them, to no avail. Any carvers in the Islands know who was making these in the 70s? Or were they probably pretty common at the time? We probably picked it up at the Kam swap meet, LOL.

On 2005-04-06 16:37, Dr_rous wrote:
You're correct. The second tiki was carved from the trunk of a Hawaiian tree fern. These are extremely rare nowadays because 1) Tree ferns are now protected in Hawaii, so there's no material to carve new tikis, and 2) old tree fern tikis are hard to find because tree fern wood is highly biodegradable.

Tiki Matt: Wow - I'm glad you posted the pic of that second tiki. When I was a kid, we had a similar one in our side yard and I have wondered about it. My parents must have purchased it in the mid to late 70s and it was still in great shape when we moved out in the late 80s. The family that bought our house trashed the tiki (along with everything else that required care in the yard) but that's another story.

To expand on what Dr_rous said, the material is also called hapu'u wood. And I've done google searches with permutations of "hapu'u tiki," "hapu'u carving," etc., trying to find anything about them, to no avail.

Any carvers in the Islands know who was making these in the 70s? Or were they probably pretty common at the time? We probably picked it up at the Kam swap meet, LOL.

Post #151450 by ainokea on Thu, Apr 7, 2005 6:41 AM