Post #295238 by bigbrotiki on Wed, Mar 28, 2007 11:40 AM

Thank you, Tom. I like posts with IMAGES! And here are many I have not seen before. This partially explains the high price:

A.) Try to find art books that deal solely with POLYNESIAN art, and you will notice that most Oceanic Art books (like 85%), current and vintage, have a mixture of Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian art in them, with the large part being Melanesian. This is because there is such a profusion of Papua New Guinea objects out there in comparison to what the missionaries allowed to survive from Polynesia. So to find such a book, with such large illustrations, is rare. I bet many Museum libraries don't even have this one.

B.) This collection is now owned by the New Zealand Museum. But how much is on display? Very little, I am certain. Museums all over the world have large stockpiles of ancient art in their storage that they do not have the budget to display. So for scholars, this is a rare chance to catch a glimpse of stuff stored away forever in that Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse.

But books like these should not only be of interest to academic scholars (this is why you posted it), but to Tiki artists everywhere. And not only to BK, our fine premier traditionalist, but to freestyle Tiki makers too. As I mourned in my post in the Collecting Tiki/VLV mug thread, the Tiki revival has been going in circles artistically, because too few new artists seem to bother to study the large variety of authentic Polynesian and Oceanic objects and styles that are out there in Oceanic Art books and museums. But with no connection to the original culture, a pop version of that culture becomes meaningless.

This research does nor have to be done with such a high price tag as above, but does require a little effort.