Post #564091 by Sabu The Coconut Boy on Mon, Nov 8, 2010 1:16 PM

Tom - that's a great find. Especially with the dustjacket intact. I too am intrigued with finding these earliest works that introduced the term "tiki" to the American reader. I recently read a book (have to dig up the title later), from the 1930s about a merchandiser who travelled the Orient and South Seas, collecting imagery that could be used in American products (tapa designs, sea shell patterns, thatch, bird feathers, etc.) He may be the person credited with creating the first Aloha shirts and dresses for department stores in the late 1930s. One of his lines of clothing was called "Hei Tiki" - a brand that seems to have been forgotten, but may have been another of those small seeds planted in American culture that caused us to embrace the word "Tiki" in the 1950s.