Post #201834 by bigbrotiki on Tue, Dec 6, 2005 9:34 AM

Judging by the condition of the lamps, they might not be that old, from the late 80s or so. I am sure that Michael Tsao was a regular customer of Orchids of Hawaii and regularly replaced older original lamps that had become too grimy or were falling apart.

The real rare lamps are those made by O.A. and the Sea and Jungle shop. You can see them at the Royal Hawaiian in Newport Beach, at the Hanalei Restaurant in San Diego (there used to be more), and the Alibi in Portland has a great selection for example.

This is not to say that these are not cool, anything with resin/glass mosaic work naturally is, and the shell lamps were always a classic, made and sold by all three companies.

The velvet painting (on the right behind the lamp) seems to be Hina Rapa, Leeteg's bestseller. He himself made many copies of it, and later printed copies were sold by Barney Davis' gallery.