Post #704454 by AceExplorer on Mon, Jan 13, 2014 4:45 AM

I dunno, good question. There may not have been a distinct moment, or a single act, of bringing a carving into the US and putting it on display for a fun/decorative purpose. (Interestingly, other world travelers, museum curators, and historians may have already done so ahead of the development of the tiki craze) but for moment that's all I can do - a wild guess. The association I have always made is that carvings were present in tropical cultures and with increased travel, and post-war nostalgia, people started bringing stuff over to the US in a very general touristy way and started decorating with these things. But then you had Donn Beach and Vic Bergeron who were into this stuff, and who also traveled, who may have brought some of this stuff back into their restaurants well ahead of everyone else. I don't think I have ever seen a good compendium of what the interiors of the old restaurants looked like and what they contained. So I will have to leave this for others here on TC to attempt to answer.