Post #185118 by Kailuageoff on Wed, Sep 7, 2005 4:33 PM

Neptunetiki called to tell me about this post since I spend a fair amount of time in Daytona. Sorry I don't know the answer for certain, but here is my theory:

The handles were/are on two sets of doors. The doors to the outside parking lot and the inside doors that open onto the bridge over the Koi pond. Sven told me the handles probably came from Oceanic Arts. We guess they were installed when the hotel was built in the early 70's.

I don't think the owner would have sold those handles.
She is the daughter of the guy who built the Hawaiian Inn and the Aku Tiki Inn and has a love for the tiki motiff of both properties. For example, she is the person responsible for restoring the big Moai at the Aku Tiki Inn that was damaged in one of the hurricanes last year.

It is true they did work on the hotel after the hurricanes, but I think refreshing is probably a better term than redecorating. I know of several people who have asked if they wanted to sell their Witco and the management said "no".

Anyway, it could be that someone stole the handles off one set of the doors to sell them on e-bay. It seems to me, however, that anyone taking the trouble to steal them would have known they were valuable as tiki objects and listed them as such.

For these reasons, I think they may simply be a set of handles from some other Florida tiki establishment. All this is just a semi-educated guess, but I'll try to check it out and let everyone know (unless someone else finds out first and posts the answer).
KG

[ Edited by: Kailuageoff 2005-09-07 16:37 ]