Post #593492 by bigbrotiki on Mon, Jun 13, 2011 2:31 PM

On 2011-06-13 12:36, trutiki wrote:
Weren't for the most part vintage mugs mass produced drinkware for bars and restaurants whose manufacture was outsourced to large industrial restaurant supply providers who created alongside the tiki mugs all kinds of other everyday unimportant things? I know there were exceptions and I've read about them in detail, but 98% of what I see held up as special for its historical context really doesn't deliver anything greater than any other collected flotsam from another time, say napkins or matchbooks. The latter continue to be produced and may or may not reflect vintage elements, so what's the difference? Design aesthetics are not "owned." They are not fixed in time.

I can see that it is a much more intellectually gratifying pursuit when you are a strict adherent to pre-determined collecting parameters as you are not the author of your story. Your collection reveals itself as the circuitous path of your own excursion through time unfolds. You mentally access your historical database prior to each acquisition. Every time you do that the past is resurrected for you. When a person collects what delights their senses the satisfaction is in possession and living with the collected things. The parameters flex but the experience no less gratifying.

Two different styles of collecting, one no less valuable than the other. You can elevate tiki mugs to iconography status but at the core they are consumer artifacts plain and simple. New or old, both have a place depending on your position as a collector.

Eloquently put, but I am not buying that "it's all the same" philosophy. To the true Tikiphile, the mid-century Tiki mug cannot simply be reduced to "mass-produced drink-ware":

To the late 20th Century urban archaeologist it was (more often than not) the proof of the existence of a long gone Tiki temple. Its strangeness as an object inspired the further search for other ephemera such as matchbooks, postcards and menus, which then formed the pieces of a mosaic that slowly formed the image of a complete pop culture, a design style that had been forgotten, largely because it had not been recognized as such in its own time.

The whole point of why Tiki style is unique is that it is the only American pop culture I know of that was indeed inspired by such a "mundane" thing as restaurant culture, to form a style that influenced motels, apartment buildings, bowling alleys and home bars. The mid-century Tiki mug stands as the classic symbol of that pop culture. How does that resemble "any other collected flotsam"? And how can post-2000 Tiki mugs claim that same historic complexity - other than being inspired by the original culture, and being the symbol of an artistic revival of it?