Post #16186 by bigbrotiki on Thu, Dec 12, 2002 7:11 PM

Laney, that blow fish-in-the-float lamp at OA is one of my faves, too, that's why I singled it out in the Hawaiian Airlines video. I also like the "shaded" floats with the Chinese hat on it. Another type I really dig are the ones they have at the Royal Hawaiian, those floats with a nautical still life in them: Beach sand at the bottom, with starfish and driftwood and shells stuck in it.
The first lamp I ever got from OA was a jug light on a wood base supended with rope from a piece of driftwood, with a fishing net cork on top and surrounded by plastic bamboo. A nice detail is the fact that they sprayglued sand on the driftwood to make it look like just beachcombed. That was back when they still let go off their display models...

I was lucky to have been into this early enough to get ahold of some restaurant fixtures, I fished 5 resin fisnet floats out of the dumpster at Kelbo's after they had turned into a strip club and got two lamps from "The Tikis". One of my faves I found in a antique store, the "fishtrap" split bamboo with three resin floats in it, fish netting, plastic vines and an aged toucan sitting on it. It is hard to display because of it's size (almost 6 feet long) and the low ceilings in my house.
The most elusive classic Tiki supper club light I still would like to find are those giant turtle shells with coloured resin inlays. VERY politically incorrect, but once a staple of every Tiki bar worth it's salt. At Ren Clark's supposedly "more than 100 giant lighted turtle shells are suspended from the the gallery which leads from Ren Clark's Polynesian Village to the pool area of the Western Hills Hotel, Fort Worth, Texas."
Polynesian Pop obviously played a part in making the giant turtle an endangered species.
Ask OA if they have an extra copy of their old "Polynesian Lighting" catalog, it's unfortunately only in black & white, but the variety of concepts back then is just great.