Post #431776 by hodadhank on Sat, Jan 31, 2009 8:30 AM

Aloha all.

As I promised/threatened at the end of '08 I'll be peppering into this thread artwork from beyond the pacific rim that you might enjoy including in your home bar. (GASP!)

Try to remember that the godfathers of tiki really couldn't have cared less if the tikis with which they decorated their restaurants and hotels were actually by indigenous native carvers or some WASP in orange county. The overall effect of transportative otherworldlyness was, in my opinion their ultimate goal.

You might explore evidence of this in photos featuring Chinese tiles, decorative Japanese sake urns and net floats or wicker furnishings from Asia Minor and the Carribean featured in the Book of Tiki. The general materials used to construct these artificial atmospheres were also of suspiciously non-Polynesian origin. I believe we can all agree there's a severe lack of African Benin, German Walnut and English Brown Oak in the Pacific and of course Donn Beach had no aversion to the Carribean even employing maps of the rum islands in his restaurants. You like rum. (I'm just trying to help connect the dots for you.)

Anyhooo... By now purists have gone off to look at some pretty tapa on another thread leaving us, the fearless, to continue our journey into the heart of the Carribean...

The artisans of Andros Island...

This is Henry, my tokayo and a startlingly acurate carver with hatchet!