A dream realized-Witco in a thrift shop

"Westenhaver's art can still be found in Florida motels as well as in thrift stores throughout the U.S." From page 253 of TBOT

I always thought "Ha-yeah right!"
As a lover of Witco I have found some bargains on ebay and dropped a pretty penny on sets on and off ebay. But with about 10 years of thrifting under my belt have yet to find a bit of the stuff! So. CA is so picked over!

Yesterday afternoon, Cory talked me into going to check out a newly opened club with "maybe after we could check out your thrift shop" I hit this thrift shop almost every Thursday (the day they change the sale tags) But that is the pretty much the only day I thrift. I agreed and we found out that the club dosen't open until 6 so off to the thrift store-HA! Cory and my son HATE thrifting and follow me sighing and asking "are you done yet?" Well I grabbed a cart, hit the bric-a-brac and housewares, through some other crap, look down and there is a Witco piece! I snached it up and turned it with "Look a WITCO!" I think I said it about 6 times to Cory because I couldn't believe it myself.

Now it's nothing super rare but $12.98 for any Witco is cool! After nearly 10 years, I'm thrown a bone. I sent Cory to ask if there was the other half as I know these often came in pairs and the guy said that it had been in the employee lounge for nearly a month because someone was going to buy it but they decided to put it out today. YEA! YEA! YEA!

She is almost 4' tall, beautiful teal color background and excelent condition. She is the goddess behind my bar and now is amongst friends! There is hope!

Laney, you have too much Witco for one person, seriously. Now pass some my way.

Laney,
That's a really nice piece and I'm not sure I've seen it before. Are you going to paint or refinish her? Do you know what she looked like out of the box? I have a Witco wahine panel I want to retouch, but am worried about screwing it up. Congrats!
KG

Congrats, Laney, so good to hear from you. If you want to see a Witco-at-a-thriftstore lucky guy, you should check out Bosko's collection! (which, I am happy to report, seems to have escaped the wrath of Pele by inches).
Why repaint? That piece looks like it's in it's original condition. Cool.

hey sven, your "fire dancers" award came from a thrift store right here in bombingham aladamnbama... and in this same city at a 20th century art exhibit thanks to your expertise I was able to inform the curator that one of his pieces was witco... it's all around. I shudder to think how much was trashed in the 80's.

Change the world for real this time - spread the mind virus: http://universist.meetup.com

On 2003-10-29 15:00, Kailuageoff wrote:
Laney,
That's a really nice piece and I'm not sure I've seen it before. Are you going to paint or refinish her? Do you know what she looked like out of the box? I have a Witco wahine panel I want to retouch, but am worried about screwing it up. Congrats!
KG

No, I don't plan on doing a thing to her, all my Witco get is a light dusting with furniture polish. Like Sven said, she is in original condition. The mask you can see part of in the pics is painted as well as the two spears it came with. These originally came painted and are the only things in my collection that are. I have a turtle footstool that I've heard is sometimes painted but mine is not. I'm not sure what kind of paint you would use to touch up your piece but the paint on my pieces is flat and looks old. Good luck

you can still see witco in florida motels as well.. up in daytona the hawaiian inn and aku are loaded with it.. or were a few years ago

Nice find, Laney! Congragulations...I have always maintained that there is plenty,and I mean PLENTY of tiki stuff out there. I stopped posting on Tiki Finds because I thought I was perhaps getting a bit redundant with pile after pile. It's there for the taking, folks...just takes devoted bushbeating. I pulled three Witcos in one year out of the same flea market....That tenacity and picker's grit that Laney had that day is all it takes.

Maybe BigBro can clear this up...
Some of the Witco I've seen has very bright paint on it. Looks like enamel. Others have a flat paint which I thought must be faded. The wahine carving I have is not in the best condition but is presentable. It has flat paint, however, which I thought could be retouched.
Color me puzzled....

speaking of witco..

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3561368968

Ha! That's really funny that he did an article like that.... I read somewhere that Trader Vic did an article with Sunset magazine on how to build your own Chinese oven.

Here's a link to an old thread about painted Witco. I think Bigbro was in a bad mood that day. Maybe Keigs can ask about the painted pieces and give more info on original type of paint or why some are and some aren't painted.

Keigs, I'd still love to see a website with pics of old catalogs and maybe even a gallery of Witco that people can post pictures to. I know there's tons of stuff floating around that we haven't seen yet. Great for ideas too!

https://tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=1295&forum=5

Laney,
As you can tell from that old thread, I'm still searching for the definitive answer.... other than "how the %$#@ should I know."
How on un-Sven-tlemanly of BigBro....
especially since KenTiki was a member of the old Yahoo club and is one of the nicest people on the planet.

Over the weekend I bit the bullet and put some orange oil on my wooden wahine. She was really thirsty and is feeling much better now. I only hope I didn't do some kind of weird permanent damage that is not yet apparent.
KG

[ Edited by: Kailuageoff on 2003-11-03 12:26 ]

I know these are Witco's but my question is with the paneling behind the wood carvings. Is this something that was added on later, or is this how they were produced? Any info?

[ Edited by: DawnTiki on 2003-11-03 15:38 ]

Yes, I do believe they came with those. My king and queen chess pieces have a similar backing with orange fabric behind.

Thanks Laney

Nice find Laney, you deserve it after 10 years of looking. Almost every Witco piece was done many different ways. When ordering Witco pieces you could choose different backgrounds and colors. That is why there are so many differnt styles of the same thing. Many Witco pieces were painted. I asked Bill what kind of paint he used and he said he used mostley latex house paint. It would be painted first and then coated with a wax finish. I have a friend working on my website and hope to have it up and running soon. It will have pics and info on Witco. I will post the web address when it is up and running. If you have more questions feel free to ask and I will try and answer them or ask Bill.

Mahalo for clearing that up Keigs. Next stop, Home Despot.
KG