Post #412558 by bigbrotiki on Thu, Oct 9, 2008 4:58 PM

On 2008-10-09 15:07, TIKI DAVID wrote:
A while back ,i asked if anyone knew, or if there were records of how many of any particular piece of Witco were made.I got spanked and told " it's about the art not the rarity or dollar value of a piece.but MY bar is one of only 15 made."

Now comes this piece
Is it rare enough to hang on to, and deal with the posible problem of it not being very politicaly correct. How do you deal with that issue.

I don't recall an answer like that, by me or anybody, to a question about edition numbers. That answer, in my mind, would have been given to any direct question about monetary value of a piece (which might or might not be related to its rarity). I do remember posting 1 or 2 pages from a 60s Witco catalog that had the numbers SOLD pencilled in next to the items, with items with very low numbers being crossed out and marked discontinued. Interesting, but not conclusive at all, since it covered a period of less than a year. Witco was selling their product for 12 years, and I have never seen complete records of how many of a particular design were made during that whole period, I don't think they exist. They constantly threw new designs at the consumer and discontinued old ones. There are a few staples that made it through the 60s AND the 70s, but anyone who has collected Witco for a while knows them by now. And these are usually priced by today's desirability, not by how many were ever made (the Witco World for example).

As for that planter, I believe it's an early 70s item, and the unpainted version (Tiki Mod has the painted one next to the Tahitian Bar) is very rare, I've never seen one before. I think it's genius, and its un-PCness is the beauty of it, just like it is with a lot of Tiki stuff. Remember, as I stated in Tiki Mod, back in the 70s, a lot of black guys equally believed that that Witco stuff was the sh*t.