Something...uh, carved on the Avengers

This appears to have Maori elements of design but, the colors!

Is this just an example of set decorators mixing metaphors or is it a Native American style of some kind?

Just my wild guess, looks like native Canadian or Alaskan.

The one at the top right kinda looks like Elmo in drag.

Yeesh.

Ahu

No native canadian in there at all that I can see. Definitely maori, but those colours are very non-traditional.

What epidode of the Avengers? I have nearly all of them but don't remember one with carvings. Of course with Diana Rigg and or Honor Blackman, I could have been distracted!

It's called "The 50,000 pound Breakfast."

I've tried comparing it to North American totem designs but can't find anything that matches well enough.

The peaked lip mouth design, slanted eyes, the position of the three fingered hands look Maori. Be kinda cool to find those exact elements in a North American culture too.

[ Edited by: purple jade on 2005-05-18 13:13 ]

Looks to me that you were right in that it is both N Amarican and Polynesian mixed in together and painted. Just an artist or 2 with a little knowledge of both styles and not a Lot of experience with either. But that can't be quite right because the maori figures are pretty good examples and the tlinket owls and other animals are also really good carvings.. So just mixing them in together.

(Whew!)

Well, thank goodness. I thought you meant something had been carved "on" The Avengers. I mean, like, directly on them.

I was scratching my head. "That show got pretty hectic at times, but I don't remember THAT episode..."

I would really have to say that there is no first nations art in there what-so-ever.

Growing up in a tourist city who's main attraction is first nations art, I have seen an absolute ton of it, in many different forms.

Here are a couple of owl masks:

When you've looked at this stuff for as long as I have, studied it, and had it drilled into your brain, it becomes second nature when it comes to identification.

I may not know what it is, but I do know what it's not.

I'll have to agree with you Tikiwahine. If they are owls they are pretty basic. It's probably quick studio crap done on the set.

That's the one with the dummy? The dead guy has diamonds in his tummy! Hey!! I made a poem! Benzart You are probably right on the mark. It might even have been lying around the studio for awhile.

Another couple of pictures off the show are these wierd things on the shelf. Later in another night shot they have lights inside of them that lets light out through their eyes and mouth.

The next picture is of the bar area. note the carved lamp, the carvings on the wall and I don't know if you can tell from the picture or not but they covered the wall and the bar in this section of the "room" with fake bamboo wallpaper.( behind the lamp part of the wall)

I think they were trying for some sort of tropical theme over all as later in the show on a differant set they have a steel drum group playing and Stead asks, " why all the jungle music?" Jungle music?! ha ha!

the carving remind me of the totem pole "carvings" they used to have in the butlins beachcomber bars.

I've seen that episode today by chance. As from what I could see (and I don't see the photos you seem to have posted here), there are walls made of bamboo, Maori style carvings plus three cone-shaped basket weave tribal masks, but I can't tell which culture they represent (Vanuatu? or even maybe African?). As for the colorfulness of the Maori carvings, it must be remarked, that Maori art, especially of newer origin, does indeed use a wide and colorful range of paints. So this set is not just mindless studio production, in my opinion.

Mo, the cone shaped tribal masks are based on the Duk Duk (or similar) masks...

...a favorite object of study in the old German PNG colonies - and of mine :D :

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=29418&forum=2&vpost=470058

On 2005-05-19 12:22, exotica59 wrote:
....I think they were trying for some sort of tropical theme over all as later in the show on a different set they have a steel drum group playing and Stead asks, " why all the jungle music?"...

I believe the decor was to suggest the rich financier as an aficionado of primitive art, contrasting it Tiki Modern-style with a high tech office.
Of course the garish colors worked against that (...but it helped with the Americanization of the series changing from B&W to color in 1967)

On 2005-05-20 10:40, atomictonytiki wrote:
the carving remind me of the totem pole "carvings" they used to have in the butlins beachcomber bars.

I totally agree: If we retrace the origin of the Butlin's Beachcombers, we will find that they were inspired by the Mayfair Hotel Beachcomber. The same architecture firm built both. And who designed the Mayfair Beachcomber for them: Erik Blakemore, a film designer at the Elstree Studios near London. Where was "The Avengers" shot? At Elstree, of course. When I look at the "Beachcomber nightclub" set of the Elstree Studio production "The Cracksman", the conceptual style of the Tikis is very much like the ones on the Avengers set. Here is the close up of the big Maori Tiki on the Avengers:

And one on The Cracksman Beachcomber set:

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=31059&forum=1&vpost=429905

Unfortunately, as far as I could see, we never get a full-size shot of the Avengers Maori, which is quite tall:

So from this point on, I will call all these British Butlin and other Tikis "Elstree Tikis", because to me they form their own genre. :)

One more comparison between the Avengers and The Cracksman Maori poles:

All I have to say is "wow, Purple Jade!"....sort of like a bringing up a name at a High Schoool reunion