Post #719370 by Tattoo on Thu, Jun 5, 2014 7:44 PM

Thanks everyone for the kind words (and thanks to whosoever images I used :) ). But, I must first and foremost thank Sven (bigbro) for pointing the way. I should quote him here from the Crypto thread where he does a much better job than me - with better images - explaining the origins of the Tiki Bowl:

The Tiki supported drinking bowl is a very logical "first", as the concept was take directly from museum pieces, most likely one of the Hawaiian bowls, this being the most famous one:

The Hawaiians made quite a few others...

...and there are Maori-made designs too:

Looking at the Hawaiian bowls, from what I understand actually represent Menehune holding the bowls (yes?), we can clearly see the basis for the Ren Clark bowls:

One of which was in fact found:

The original Hawaiian bowls using Menehune makes actually a lot of sense since Menehune are mythological miniature people. Would it actually be offensive to use Tikis in this manner? Well, I don't think anyone really cared to ask. Leave it up to the westerners to re-interpret a culture for their own desires - to make it more exotic!

Okay... obviously I also completely left out the whole array of Moai bowls which is a whole other chapter. Anyhow, more bowls please!

[ Edited by: tattoo 2014-06-06 09:12 ]