Thee TIKI Encyclopedia

We need a TIKI Encyclopedia. A book that compiles all the tiki terminology with definitions or a description. I would truly appreciate some of the following:

~names of all the TIKI gods
~terminology for carvers (names of tools and names/descriptions of various woods)
~names a descriptions of all the ongoing tiki events
~list of all the Polynesian islands

yada yada yada

There's already something called 'The Book of Tiki', which I'm sure you've heard about. What you're describing sounds like a cross between a National Geographic History of Polynesia & Their Idols and a Tiki party guide. Maybe that could work. I'm just interested in Tiki from a party/pop culture angle, but that's just me.

What is an Encyclopedia? Just kidding, encyclopedia how novel! :wink: This place is Tikipedia, you just have to sift through it all. If you'd like to make the kind of book you described this is the place to start!

[ Edited by: nitropic 2007-01-26 18:45 ]

[ Edited by: nitropic 2007-01-26 18:46 ]

Yes. An alphabetized quick reference book!

Someone out there is thinking "Ka-ching!" right now.

As my handle indicates, I tried to do something like this and even got a number of articles written for an online encyclopedia I was putting together.

However, I just don't have very much time these days to research, write, and maintain articles... it is really time consuming for somebody to do this, unless somebody uses an open source encyclopedia format like Wikipedia. I was thinking about setting something like this up, but again there is the lack of time issue.

And TC probably contains as much information as anybody can possibly gather about Tiki, the only advantage of a formal encyclopedia format is that it might be easier to conduct research.

Who knows, Hanford and Humuhumu have the groove for online tiki resources... maybe they could set up an open source encyclopedia format.

On 2007-01-26 17:11, VampiressRN wrote:
We need a TIKI Encyclopedia. A book that compiles all the tiki terminology with definitions or a description. I would truly appreciate some of the following:

~names of all the TIKI gods
~terminology for carvers (names of tools and names/descriptions of various woods)
~names a descriptions of all the ongoing tiki events
~list of all the Polynesian islands

Sometimes the challenge of finding information is the fun part.... :) Even if that means searching non-tiki stuff!

There's a book called "Oceanic Arts" that has a lot of info on South Seas artifacts, on a region by region basis. Doesn't have specific information on a god by god basis though. I have seen Hawaiian websites that have a run down on Hawaiian gods, but not for the whole South Pacific as you're after.

Your best bet for wood carving tech info is wood carving books and websites. Get all the tech info from there, get your inspiration for tikis from TC. By broadening your frame of reference you also get cool ideas you can take and give a tiki twist :)

Tiki events calender sounds like a good idea. How about a sticky thread under tiki events with links to the threads with all the info?

List of the Polynesian islands? There's HEAPS! At what point do you draw the line size wise?

Some good ideas but at the end of the day there's a lot of work putting all that info together. The problem is finding someone with both the time and the skill to pull it all together.

Kustom Kahoona* - Tiki and Hot Rod Art by Hewey*

[ Edited by: hewey 2007-01-26 22:55 ]

I only asked because someone else asked me and I thought it would be nice to have an actual Encyclopedia. Certainly it would be a compilation of all the wonderful resources that have been developed in book, online, etc. Not necessarily a theory or historic book to read, but I would love to be able to look up something according to an actual word. Anyway...just throwing out the idea. If someone wants to do this, maybe it could be set up in sections and people could submit material to help out. If somebody picks this up that would be great....if not, I can dream. :)

FATIMA BLUSH: Oh, how reckless of me. I made you all wet.

JAMES BOND: Yes, but my martini is still dry.

[ Edited by: VampiressRN 2007-01-26 23:32 ]

I'm the culprit. What are some of the common tiki words and what do they mean? I'm not really interested in every Polynesian word that exists, just some common terms.

On 2007-01-26 17:11, VampiressRN wrote:
We need a TIKI Encyclopedia. A book that compiles all the tiki terminology with definitions or a description. I would truly appreciate some of the following:

~names of all the TIKI gods
~terminology for carvers (names of tools and names/descriptions of various woods)
~names a descriptions of all the ongoing tiki events
~list of all the Polynesian islands

yada yada yada

As Don Ho said below, there are two approaches to Tiki. This website appears to be very much slanted towards the pop elements of Tiki, which is ok, but if you are looking for authentic polynesian information, this website would not be the place to get very much real information.

So basically, BOT already covers most of the important elements of Tiki pop. I own it and love it.

If you want information on polynesian culture, go to Wikipedia. Lot's of good stuff there!!

To recap:

Either buy Book of Tiki or do some sort of hit and miss searching via wikipedia (and we know they can be trusted for accuracy). Thanks for the help. Much appreciated.