Post #609915 by Sabu The Coconut Boy on Tue, Oct 11, 2011 11:53 PM

DC - that 1954 date is awesome. It fits in nicely with other data I've been accumulating. However, looking at the photos closer, I'm wondering if the second tiki you have marked as on the grounds of the Royal Hawaiian, might not actually be the Kalakaua Ave shopping center tiki, just shot from the store-window side. Notice how the planter around the tiki's feet and the base look the same. In any case, it's a tiki by the mystery fernwood carver who was very active in Waikiki/Honolulu from around 1954-1957; just prior-to or at the same time Ed Brownlee started carving hardwood tikis in Hawaii. This fernwood carver's tikis share a lot of similar attributes:

:down: DC's photo, dated 1954 and Hina Tiki, 1955 which was shipped to Honolulu Harry's in Chicago:

:down: The two tikis on Kalakaua Ave, from a postcard postmarked 1955, (notice the headdress on the first is almost like a cigar-store indian's and how the tiki is a dead-ringer for the one in DC's black & white photo):

:down: Tiki from Alex Stordahl's "Magic Islands Revisited" lp and a similar tiki from the 1957 University of Hawaii yearbook, (again notice the almost indian-style headdress):

:down: And finally I would argue that the Tiki from Don The Beachcomber, Honolulu (1955) and the Trader Hall's tiki are also by the same carver, based on facial features and body styles:

As Bosko noted in another thread, this local carver really was making a name for himself at the time. I just wish we know what that name was. He's still a mystery.

[ Edited by: Sabu The Coconut Boy 2011-10-12 00:47 ]