Post #467412 by GatorRob on Tue, Jul 7, 2009 3:29 PM

Here is another picture of the tiki now in the gardens when it was indoors in the Surfboard Bar:

Sorry about the quality, but we're zoomed way in to a low res image. If you look closely, you can see that not only are there wings behind the figure's head, but an entire bird! So this makes him (her?) a close relative of the other winged tiki that we know was at the Mai-Kai as Chip pointed out earlier in this thread.

According to Bob and LeRoy at OA, our tiki here may have been carved by Barney West, although they are not certain. Bob pointed out that they sold Jack Thornton tons of authentic New Guinea artifacts in the early days. But I don't know that this would have been one of them. It seems more like someone's (Barney's?) take on a PNG carving. But that's just my opinion.

Big mahalo to Bob and LeRoy for sending me this next image from the ARTS OF THE SOUTH SEAS book (Museum of Modern Art, Simon and Schuster, 1946). If the Mai-Kai tiki is a mid-century interpretation of a genuine Papua New Guinea carving, this may very well be the image it was derived from:

That's quite a bird! And what a sight that big tiki must have been when it was under the A frame of the Mai-Kai!

This last image is one I found of another authentic carving of the same general figure:

The accompanying text reads: "This ancient and elegant piece is a roof spire from a Middle Sepik ceremonial house. Represented is a heron carrying away a woman — a classic Sepik River creation figure."

Tom and Will, you've got your work cut out for you if you're going to try to replace the missing bird! Not to mention some trees that might get in the way of that wingspan.