Post #601797 by bigbrotiki on Wed, Aug 10, 2011 9:07 AM

This is a good question, in a good thread, by a good Tiki archeologist, and it deserves an answer. The short answer would be that the Polynesia's logo is Marquesan (from the Marquesas Islands, the cradle of Polynesian culture, North of Tahiti)

But it wouldn't be quite correct for the above, because the match book example you picked here depicts a stylized, modernist version of the initial Marquesan logo art that can be seen on the menu on page one of this thread. Here is another menu page with the rendering in its original form:

But then they used that stylized version on another (later?) menu. This version really had very little to do with Marquesan art:

I guess that menu cover artist didn't know or care what he was depicting (now how could THAT be !? :) )

Then you calling it a SHIELD makes sense, but I knew that the Marquesans did not use shields, so I went and looked where in Marquesan art this form had been used (I had asked myself before about that). The patterns could have been from tatoo sample boards...

...but that rounded-off form was not used for those. That form kinda reminded me of this Paul Gauguin print:

...but I guess that is more phallic. The best likeness of shape I could come up with was this TOBACCO CONTAINER:

(Tobacco was a dried plant that natives would put in "pipes" and light on fire to inhale its smoke - would you believe it !?)

Does anybody have any other suggestions, please?

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2011-08-10 11:49 ]