Post #653650 by bigbrotiki on Thu, Sep 27, 2012 9:41 PM

Great research, Taboo, that really seems to make this bowl the earliest Tiki cocktail container ever made. I do not know of any Tiki mugs having appeared earlier than the mid-50s. Perhaps the first cylindrical logo Tiki mug ever was the the Tiki Bob's mug. Then there was Spurlin in L.A. who hand-made mugs for The Islander. Steve Crane's The Luau did not have any Tiki mugs until the Kon Tiki chain started, Don The Beachcomber never had any, and Trader Vic's "Suffering Bastard" mug came out much later and was never used in the restaurants. The heyday of the Tiki mug, the explosion of the many designs and manufacture in Japan really did not happen until the late 50s - early 60s, paralleling the heyday of Tiki Style in design and architecture.

The Tiki supported drinking bowl is a very logical "first", as the concept was take directly from museum pieces, most likely one of the Hawaiian bowls, this being the most famous one:

The Hawaiians made quite a few others...

...and there are Maori-made designs too:

But what inspired the first MUG ? Clearly, there were cylindrical Tiki poles, and on a smaller scale, Marquesan bone toggles that were hollow inside...