Post #301331 by Bahookahuna on Mon, Apr 23, 2007 8:10 PM

Sven,

Thanks for the feedback. If it helps with your urban archaeological research for the next book, I can tell you that these (from Culbertson Imports) were indeed carved in Asia, specifically in Indonesia. You might even consider contacting Culbertson to see if they happen to know where TravelingJones's tikis come from. All things are possible. This might all end up in your "What To Avoid" chapter, of course.

That being said, I'm not sure the designs themselves are from Indonesia -- I think it's imaginable that a couple of Southern California guys, influenced by the same "new tiki idiom" that's all over the place and that you partly defined in your post, came up with the designs and then commissioned some Indonesian carvers to produce the goods. TravelingJones's tikis strike me as probably having been designed in Asia, while Culbertson's seem strongly influenced by the new directions in American tiki.

Look at some of the stuff coming out of Florida; PalmTreeCharlie, for example (http://www.tikis4u.com/). There, you have the same giant teeth, the pineapples on the foreheads, what Bosko called "crazy scariness" and ascribed to current American tiki interpretation, and a feature of the "new tiki idiom" you didn't mention but that I think belongs to the same genre -- what I call "the baboon look," of which my new tiki, by the way, is itself guilty. But PalmTreeCharlie is from Florida, and his tiki touchstones are, presumably, DisneyWorld's Enchanted Tiki Room, the Mai Kai, and other undefiled mid-century Poly Pop sites. So all those characteristics are, I would think, American in origin. Conversely, the pot bellies, wrong proportions, and too-humanlike trunks and limbs of TravelingJones' tikis are -- I would guess, as you guys did -- Asian. As someone else mentioned, you can see a probable influence from Buddhist statuary.

Oh, my tiki is also guilty of the giant tongue, which had to -- I think -- have sneaked into the idiom via exposure to images of Maori carvings. The Maori being from New Zealand, that feature is not completely un-South Pacific, though it may be un-mid-century Poly Pop (I'm not sure).

Lastly, my tiki is guilty of having been glossy. Really, really glossy. But you'll be relieved to know, when imagining all those glossy tikis gleaming away in backyards all over America, that the gloss almost completely weathers off with the first good rain.

You mentioned cutting your tiki teeth (if I may paraphrase) on Oceanic Arts. I cut my own starting in 1970 hunting for the Hidden Tiki in the shadow of the Goof at the Bali Hai, listening to the birds sing words and the flowers croon at Disneyland, sneeking guilty peeks at Les Baxter's "Soul of the Drums" album cover in various tiki living rooms around San Diego, overhearing "Le Sacre du Sauvage" on LP (played by the LP's original buyer), and with my siblings begging my parents to pull into the Hanalei Hotel parking lot so we could glimpse the lava rock waterfalls. And in the end, the goofiness, humor, and even painted features of our new tiki from Culbertson seemed to fit seamlessly into my own tiki story. Goofiness, humor, and paint, could all, after all, also describe any tiki from the Bali Hai or from that most iconic of all mid-century Poly Pop sites, Disneyland's Enchanted Tiki Room. Our new tiki even gets along well with the two PNG-style masks and pufferfish light from Oceanic Arts, and with the moai carved by Leroy Schmaltz's own two hands.

Come to think of it, even TravelingJones' tikis don't look half bad in Queen Kamehameha's spot-on backyard (which includes one of the finest backyard tiki bars I've ever seen; Bosko, are those a couple of yours on the wall?): http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=20143&forum=18&hilite=queen%20kamehameha%20backyard and http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=21678&forum=1

...so who knows?

Bahookahuna

Look not into the eyes of the idol...

[ Edited by: Bahookahuna 2007-04-23 20:15 ]