Post #661862 by bigbrotiki on Tue, Dec 18, 2012 12:16 PM

On 2012-12-18 10:58, tikiskip wrote:
So Demetrio may have been the carver of the large board I have from the Kahiki.
This is why I say always sign your work.

Remember, all the medium sized wall carvings like the masks and shields and weapons, plus the smaller Tikis which came from O.A. were lathe-carved copies. Demetrio probably carved the hero, exactly copying the photo in the Oceanic Art book.

That book simply was THE best, readily available source of Oceanic designs for the Tiki carver in the late 50s, because A.) there were only one or two other art books out on the subject then, and B.), the photos in it were large and crisp, and showed a lot of detail. O.A. practically founded their business on it, and the Mai Kai, as we found out, took much of what is in and on its walls from those pages:

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=26630&forum=1&start=15

Believe me, it was downright eery to find out (long AFTER I had written the book on the American pop version of Oceanic art) that this influential book had not only originated in my hometown, but from the home of a childhood friend of mine. Tiki works in strange ways indeed...