Post #306241 by bigbrotiki on Mon, May 14, 2007 11:23 AM

On 2007-05-13 22:54, TikiGardener wrote:
I have an image of a carving that was purchased at Tiki Gardens that looks similar this guy.

True, but this is because the posture and the facial Tatoos ARE the standard style that was prevalent in Maori-dom. But yours has fat lips, while the Traders'/DeYoung Museum one has the exposed, ratty-looking teeth that can be found on dried Maori heads, as seen on page 178 of the BOT.

That makes for a very different expression.

Also, the three/four finger hands on the Tiki Gardens one are more common in Maori Tikis, while this guy's full five finger hands are not seen that often, but all the TV Tiki copies also seem to have them.

On 2007-05-14 03:06, cheekytiki wrote:
I recieved this as a birthday present from the manager of TVs, it is one of the new candle holders they have had made.
It's obviously based on the same Tiki design, but you can see the design has been even further diluted....

...by the ASIAN carvers that T.V. gets their stuff from nowadays.

On 2007-05-13 22:05, SoccerTiki wrote:
Would that book be "Arts of the South Seas", 1946 Museum of Modern Art, New York???

I am confused about this question. Are you saying it IS in that book? If so, I can't find it in there...
I thought it would be clear that "Arts of The South Seas" would be the first book where I would look, as well as "Oceanic Art" (1954), and I would have found it in their pages. These two books were used quite a bit by 50s/60s Tiki temple designers and Tiki carvers, because they were among the earliest out there when the trend took off. But by the end of the 50s/early 60s there were many more Oceanic/primitive art books available, just look at this:

...No!, not THIS, but THAT :roll: :

In this impressive book shelf we find the titles "Oceanic Sculpture","Art of the South Pacific Islands","Folk Art of Oceania","Native art of the Pacific something","The Arts of The South Pacific", and lots more Primitive Art books. I don't even have half of these. Nor do I have that lamp...
Is there anything else? Oh yeah, the above photo also proves that research CAN be fun, and that if you were a primitive/modern art coinoisseur in the 60s, you had nekkid chicks hanging out around your pad.

BUT back to the Logo Tiki at hand: He made his first appearance as early as 1955, (that is the copyright on the Traders Beverly Hills menu), when most of these books weren't around yet. So the fact that he is NOT in the two first mentioned, early Oceanic Art books makes it very likely that he was either
A) in an early 50s DeYoung Museum catalog,
B) in an SF newspaper Magazine article about the museum or the Oceanic Art trend, or
C) even owned (and later bestowed to the museum) by the Trader himself.

If a local TCer would go to the De Young museum library/archive, and search and ask them for the history of that Tiki and any pre '55 catalogs/publications, we might find out more.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2007-05-14 11:30 ]