Post #79629 by CowboyMike on Sat, Mar 6, 2004 6:41 PM

I'm new but I want to weigh in on this one.

I don't think everyone places Tiki in the same context.

I display my Tiki mugs as part of a mid-century bar setup (a credenza-type bar, not one you'd stand up behind) in a room that has a orientalist/tribal-meets-1962 feeling.

My collection includes traditional Tiki heads, but also some new mugs (which stick out because they're not shiny) and some more figural ones like Hula bowls, an Orchids of Hawaii surfer girl, Fu Manchu, etc.

For me they're all Tiki mugs because they're associated with Polynesian pop, and my memories of Tikis from when I was a kid have to do with old-fashioned Chinese restaurants, which frequently had a Tiki bar of sorts (or at least a Tiki drink menu.)

I can certainly understand someone saying Fu Manchu isn't a Tiki mug because it doesn't depict a Tiki God if they're strictly a collector of Tiki mugs and doesn't try to place them in any kind of larger design context.

For me, the mugs fit in with my other Tiki carvings, African and Mexican sculpture/carving, a glass Eames-type oval cocktail table, an Indian Gabbeh rug (geometric figural animals,) masks, and chrome barware (and as an added anachronism, an aluminum rocket-shaped lava lamp.) It's a cool-looking room.

So rather than saying which mugs are and aren't capital-T Tiki, why not just look at it from the perspective of your goals as a collector? I definitely think that if a mug was used in a Tiki bar to serve a drink, or seen on a Tiki menu, it's a Tiki mug, regardless of whether it's a godhead, surfer girl or whatnot.

And the proof is in the pudding: by this rigourous definition of a Tiki Mug needing to have a Tiki Head design, that crazy-looking severed head mug from BoT would scarecely be a Tiki, n'es ce pas?

Just my $0.02

Fo' Shizzle

[ Edited by: CowboyMike on 2004-03-06 18:43 ]