Post #190367 by bigbrotiki on Mon, Oct 3, 2005 4:20 AM

On 2005-09-18 10:14, Surfinannie wrote:
On page 250 in Svens "Book of Tiki" at the bottom left hand corner, all 3 pics are my dads Tikis not Andy Bumatays. Andy (Andre) taught my dad how to carve. The middle pic. is our back yard when we lived in Van Nuys!.....The mug was made after one of my dads Tikis also, of which my mom still has the Tiki! My mom just bought the mug on eBay, which is always advertised as a Bumatay Mug. Thanks for your interest in my father, Richard Ellis....Sven has told me he will put some info. on him in his next book, and fix those misprints. I also have some great old articles about him in the 60's in the LA Times. Will share it all if u are all interested.

Sorry it took me a while to get back to you on this, I had to confer with Leroy and Bob at O.A., it being important to me if Tiki history has to be rewritten, or simply needs a well deserved addendum:

I am glad to admit mistakes made by bad credits in an old newspaper article. I appreciate Annie's enthusiasm for her dad's work and am sure she can recognize her own backyard, but please consider that often in Tikidom, a personal involvement led to a concentrated view of just that section of it, and not the whole picture. In many cases the origin of a certain Tiki style is not as easy to pinpoint as it might appear.

The clipping you mentioned above is on page 250 of the BOT. It came from an article in the OA archives, and I had no reason to doubt the origin of the Tikis because the article opened with a (badly damaged, so not usable) photo of Andres Bumatay actually carving a Tiki with the SAME bug eyes and palm tree trunk base than the one in the middle of the latter part of the article (and the article was about Andres and his carvings only, making no mention of Rick Ellis).
Still, we all know (from experience with subject matters we know well) how lax the press handles facts, and simplifies and omits matters to the degree of falsification, so I am sure Annie is right in this matter, to some degree.

Because I also distinctly remember the four Tiki poles with that characteristic bug eye style in front of the Royal Hawaiian in Laguna Beach (most have been stolen since), and being told by the owner Junior Cabang that they were carved by Andres Bumatay (while the other Tiki posts inside were by Milan Guanko). Both carvers and the family that owns the Royal Hawaiian were good friends with each other, because they all were immigrants from the Philippines.

Might it not be possible that, since Annie's dad was taught Tiki carving by Andres, he assimilated this style and used it? It was very common back then that distinct carvers' concepts were simply copied, as often the case with Milan Guanko's Tikis for example. If a carver liked a style they saw, they just used it. In the 1970s, Wayne Coombs introduced the Pineapple Head Tiki on the Florida coast, and since then countless others have used that style and spread it along the Southern East coast. There even were several expert imitators of the Witco style back in the 60s and 70s.

Annie, if you look at the giant Sea and Jungle Shop postcard on page 234 of the BOT, would you say the three bug eye Tikis in it (1 in middle, 2 on the right) are from your dad, or Andres Bumatay? I can't say.

At this point, I will happily give Rick Ellis credit to the newspaper photos according to Annie, but in view of my research I am reluctant to change my opinion on the Bug Eye Tiki design having been ORIGINATED by Andres Bumatay, and would rather theorize that Rick Ellis picked it up from him in their collegial manner. That's why I would stick to my naming of the Islander/Hala Kahiki mug as the Bumatay mug.

And Annie, I am certain that TCers would love to see some pics from your dad's news clippings, maybe we even find someone on TC who will dig up a better original of that fantastic "Sunday Herald Examiner"(?was it?) article about your backyard in the valley that I wanna use so badly for my next book!