Benson Company Catalog - 1970

I saw a Benson Company catalog from 1970 for sale on ebay a while back that had a nice variety of Tiki items and a killer list of locations that used their products.

The cover.

Nautical Items

Some Tikis

That were shown in the listing as being featured at Disneyland.

An finally the list of clients - pretty impressive company.

I wonder if Bob and Leroy at Oceanic Arts remember the competition from this place back in the day?

DC

Wow, DC, that client list is a who's who of Polynesian restaurants and establishments. Would the name of this company have morphed into Benson's Tropical Sea Imports at 7442 Vincent Circle, Huntington Beach, CA 92648?

-Tom

I've seen most of the items on those pages at the Mai Kai!

Great find DC - as always, you are the ultra sleuth...
I'd say this is very likely the same company as today's Benson's Tropical Sea Imports. See their current logo compared with the one from 1970:

Today/1970:

Trad'r Bill

Aloha,

Interesting to see the Okolehao Bar at the Honolulu International Airport on that list. Aside from a few menu's and table cards on Arkiva Tropica, there's not much out there on the place. I wonder what stuff they decorated with from this company. Sure must have been better than Stinger Rays. I feel some microfilm coming on...

We knew a guy that worked there when the son took over the business from his father 12-14 years ago(?) he told me while they were cleaning out all the old "junk" they filled a garbage dumpster full of the old catalogs.

And there are New Caledonian pieces in the catalogue! Wow!

CN

Funny thing is, all those shields and masks are also in the 1970 Oceanic Arts catalog - plus dozens and dozens more (they must have offered 5 different New Caledonian door posts)! And here is the list of jobs that Oceanic Arts provided decor for:

Do we notice some parallels here? Indeed we do! Here is why - as far as I can piece it together, in short form:

In the mid- to late 1950s, Bob and Leroy began to carve shields, weapons, masks and Tiki poles for Bob Carter, who had an Import company named "Cargos by Carter", which was one of the earliest suppliers of tropical bars:

When these young and eager Oceanic Artists decided to go into business on their own in the 60s, they took their patterns with them. But Carter also still had examples of the carvings. When he wanted to retire, he sold his business to Bensons, another tropical importer. So the list that Bensons used was really CARTER'S list - who used O.A. carvings.

Bensons was and is less in the business of actual carvings, and more a supplier of materials like Bamboo, rattan, sea shells and Tapa. Note the difference in the header of the lists: One says "materials", the other "Decor".

I have to thank Benson's because when I began searching for Tiki remnants, it was their Long Bech warehouse I discovered first. That was in 1989. But they had no carvings Tikis except one little table top Moai. I asked them if they knew any other place where I could find such a thing, and it was THEY who told me about Oceanic Arts.

Since then Bensons has moved, here is one of their most recent catalogs:

They have posted some offers of wares here before, mostly stuff like matting and the above.

Bigbro,

I figured you would know the scoop. That OA list of clients is like a Treasure Map to the Tiki past, freakin awesome! So it was really Bob and Leroy that led to Bensons catalog to start with.

DC

In support of my post above, here is a 1958 article about Bob & Leroy doing their thing, at 23 years young. Bob was still carving then. Three paragraphs down it says:
"Working in conjunction with a Whittier importer..." That was the above mentioned Bob Carter

NEXT: The source of all American Oceanic art

Just to add to the story regarding Carter's and OA, here are excerpts from emails Bob at OA sent me several years back. I've posted this in another thread before, but makes sense to post here. His mention of Jack is referring to Jack Thornton, co-founder of the Mai-Kai.

Robert H. Carter of Cargoes by Carter was perhaps the first importer of tropical decor and sold to Donn Beach and Victor Bergeron in the late 1940's. He was based in Whittier, CA and was a very small operation, selling Gift Ware as well as the basic tropical decor such as mattings, tapa cloths, and tikis's he had carved in Western Samoa.

LeRoy and I sold for him and carved 100's of Shields, Masks and Tiki Rail Posts for him to sell to restaurants. He later moved to Westwood, CA and we went full time expanding OA. He passed away during the late 1970's.

I think some of the figures and pieces were bought by Jack during his travels. Also many figures were carved by Demitrio Chavez for Carter who sold them to the Mai Kai. OA introduced Demitrio to Carter as we did not have the funds for carvings in the early days.

So to sum it up----OA did not carve any large tiki's for the Mai Kai. Once we introduced Demetrio to Carter, Carter had some masks made from the New Guinea museum designs from the book Oceanic Art. When Carter moved to WestWood OA had many more patterns carved by Demetrio.

Carter also got the job of carving the large Aku Aku stone figures for the Aku Aku at the Stardust in Las Vegas. He and Eli Hedley worked together on them along with Vince Buono.

And, by the way, it's great to see that Cargoes by Carter catalog Sven! Do you own it or is that from the OA archives?

The above tales of origin brought back to me a fact that many who have been here for a while are familiar with, and which I thought this thread to be a good place to remind ourselves of: How Oceanic Arts got their NAME - and where many of the wall-hanging designs that ended up in that Bensons catalog originated.

(Those of you who know my previous posts on this subject, bear with me for a recent find that once more proves that often, truth is stranger than fiction)

When the demand for South Seas art began to heat up in the mid-50s to the late 50s, there were only TWO South Seas art books around in America:
The 1946 Museum of Modern Art exhibition companion entitled "Arts of the South Seas" (whose cover was used by Barney West as his logo), and:

This 1954 art book, entitled, (duh!) OCEANIC ART:

Both books were thus extensively used by American Tiki carvers as sources for their carvings. The full page, expertly modeled photographs in "Oceanic Art" especially lent themselves for being turned back into 3D. Take the above Benson's catalog (which we now established was really an O.A. catalog):

Photos from "Oceanic Art":

Now remember, our young carvers had no aspirations of being "original artists", all they were offering were "authentic" Oceanic carvings - clearly not museum originals. This "fakery" aspect constitutes much of the charm of Polynesian pop. Some of the catalog's photos even came straight out of the book:

As we know, these "artifacts" were then displayed in Tiki temples all over America, like the Mai Kai...

...and the Kahiki:

While I had pegged the book as a source of inspiration early on in my research (see BOT page 154), I had always assumed that it was the English version of an originally GERMAN art book, because of the names of both, photographer and author...

...and the fact that most of the carvings hailed from German museums:

...like my hometown anthropology museum in Hamburg. So yesterday JonPaul (who is a passionate South Seas art book collector himself:
http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=35924&forum=1 ) came by my house, and as I mentioned this thread I was joking that I should deduce these findings to the fact that a lot of the art in American Tiki temples was actually based on a German book. So while were sippin' various rums, I set out (for the first time) to find the original German version of "Oceanic Art" on the internet. First I found one dated 1970, then one 1956, by different publishers. This would not do, because the American version had a copyright of 1954:

Then, I struck gold because I found an actual image of the German 1954 version:

And now, if you have been able to follow my train of thought for this long, it got really strange: I read the name of the publisher of this book, Dr Ernst Hauswedell, Hamburg, and had a memory flash:

In my teens, when growing up in the Fontenay neighborhood of Hamburg, I had a gang of friends with which we would play and roam around through the backyards. There was a red head girl named Corinna who me and my older brother were friendly with. I remember her dad had an art auction business...and her last name was Hauswedell!!! I had been to her home several times, but really had no memory of it, or her dad.

I quickly googled her name, and she had become a peace researcher and activist, with her own publications. And yes, her father had published many bibliophile books in the 1950s, something I was never aware of.

This book had originated in my direct vicinity, down the street from me! Now factually, this happening does not really "mean" anything more than that. But if you were able to retrace my thinking at all, it was a mind-bending experience. The lord sure works in mysterious ways. I am glad JP was there to see it happen. We had to have another rum after that!

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2012-01-20 11:25 ]

Seriously? That's terrific! That sort of discovery would make my day!

Yes, another rum. Good idea. :wink:

Awesome story and overall great thread. :D

"I had been to her home several times, but really had no memory of it, or her dad."

…so you are suggesting that perhaps a Freudian repressed subconscious memory has driven you all these years, rather than der Wille zur Tiki Macht?

Fascinating.

Yeah well, they say that the human brain never forgets anything, just files it far away. So if I caught a glimpse of something at her home, it is in there somewhere. Mind you, the book came out a year before I was born, but I knew the daughter in the mid-60s, ten years later. And none of Dr. Hauswedell's other publications and art auctions I could dig up so far had anything to do with Oceanic Art, so there might not have been much around of it in my time...still, the mind boggles. Just the fact that, with so many cities, and so many publishers in Germany, I have a direct connection to this one. It's haunting.

Another great discovery,Sven!
Mahalo for sharing with us!
:)

Well what are the odds? Great discovery BigBro, and how fitting to have JP along for the quest. I'm going with KailuaGeoff's Freudian repressed memory theory - "You shall go forth and look for these South Seas artifacts" was the chant in your sleep.

DC

Wonderful story, Sven

It reminded me an interview segment I just read of cartographer Dennis Wood, in the latest issue (Jan 12) of the Believer ..... here is the excerpt

"There's a theorist named Leonard Bowden who had the idea that neighborhoods are created by eleven-year-old preadolescent males. In their running through the neighborhood and connecting families together, crossing fences, going into homes that their parents wouldn't go into, and knowing people that their parents would not even acknowledge, they create the neighborhood." ........

The full interview can be found here - no tikis, but lots of cool ideas on maps and geography
http://www.deniswood.net/content/TheBeliever.pdf

Thank you Vern, that very accurately describes what we were doing in the Fontenay neighborhood, jumping fences, cruising through neighbors' backyards. And Corinna was part of that gang - not a "gang" like in today's cities, more like the gang in "Little Rascals". It is a shame that today's generation of teenagers is doing this "backyard roaming" more and more on the computer, not actively being out there in the world.

On 2012-01-21 11:43, bigbrotiki wrote:
Thank you Vern, that very accurately describes what we were doing in the Fontenay neighborhood, jumping fences, cruising through neighbors' backyards. And Corinna was part of that gang - not a "gang" like in today's cities, more like the gang in "Little Rascals". It is a shame that today's generation of teenagers is doing this "backyard roaming" more and more on the computer, not actively being out there in the world.

You are right Sven, they don't know what they are missing..

Sorry to stray too far off from the subject, but thought I'd share this. Although I too roamed my neighborhood and the neighbor's back yards when I was a kid and that's what gave me such a strong sense of community and place, we live in such a different world now. Ironically, here's an email I received just last night from my home owners' association:

Last night, (Saturday evening, Jan. 20 and into this morning -- Sunday) on several occasions our security company had 5 male and 3 female teenagers, who were running around at about 9:30 p.m. and at 12:03 a.m., who were dragging an old holiday tree through residents' front lawns. When security arrived, the teens were gone. They were running around the rear of residents' properties on the common areas at around 2:20 a.m. And again when they saw security they all dispersed. They were hanging out at the tennis courts. The teens were dispersed by security and sent on their way and stated that they lived in the neighborhood. They were not committing any crimes, but, parents need to be aware that this is a dangerous situation and should speak with their teens about running through residents backyards in the middle of the night. If a homeowner is armed and these kids are running in the back of their property at 2:30 a.m., and a homeowner got scared, the results could be very bad. I myself was awoken at 2:00 a.m. by a girl screaming and running through our back yard.

I'm asking the parents of teens in the neighborhood to talk to your children about not engaging in this kind of activity.

I had no idea dragging a "holiday" tree through the neighbor's yards was the new thing. :D