Post #229617 by naugatiki on Sun, Apr 30, 2006 3:58 PM

There’s not much history on homemade mug making. I think that most of them were made in weekend ceramic classes poured into a ready made mold and painted with the students discretion. You get a few interesting variations that you wouldn’t find in the classic “buy the drink keep the mug tiki bar. For instance this one which I’ll call “King Tiki” since it shows a tiki in a robe perched on another tiki is in a light brown and the glazer took the liberty to paint the inside of it a bright orange to give it a more elegant feel, the name stylized on the bottom is Hazel.

I don’t know of any “official” Andres Bumatay mugs but I have seen a few homemade ones like this one.

This is a two faced on with a happy face on the back with the initials of “BLS” on the bottom.

This must have been a very popular mold since I have 3 with different glazes and names on the bottom. They have the classic Ku angry face on one side and a simple grin on the reverse, the glazes on these also reflect the painters individuality with a nice green pokadotted with blue with the date of 1969 on it. Here’s a light brown and white mug that was fired on Oct 12, 1973 in Alaska. The last one the painter framed the lip, bottom, and handle of the mug in a deep black with much of the brush strokes visible.

This same design lost it’s handle and made it to several non tiki restaurants as you can see. The red one was from a Chinese Restaurant in Hawaii called Mandarin Palace and the brown one ended up (If my memory serves) in a eatery called The Pottery. This place was famous for serving stew in a precooked pottery container, not where you’d find rumaki. Lastly the ochre mug comes from American Hawaii Cruises in The Town of Kona most likely from a luau.

This barely scratches the surface but it is nice to see the folk art tradition of tiki mugs go a step forward with the individual touches.

[ Edited by: naugatiki 2006-04-30 16:03 ]