Post #276624 by bigbrotiki on Thu, Jan 4, 2007 12:13 PM

And here a little New Years treat for all the Barney West fans (Mahalo to Oceanic Arts), I am glad there are so many.
First an 1965 L.A. Times article, the photo is from the old paper original, the text from a b&w xerox, for better legibility:

(...he might have liked the figurehead carving, but it's the Tikis where is unique talent really came through...)

And here's the cover of his catalog, which was more a fold out flier:

The big Moai that Barney is sitting on seems to be one of the two that ended up at the Washington Trader Vic's (and eventually ended up as mince meat), while the giant Trader Vic style New Guinea statue ended up at the Tiki Kai in Albuquerque

Here are two more pages from the catalog:

Now while I was able to recognize many of his Tiki statues and masks in old Trader Vic's and other Tiki establishment photos, I have NEVER seen any of his orator stools anywhere! What happened to them? Why did TV's not utilize them?
And where is that great one he is sitting on in the BOT, where he applied a Hawaiian Ku image to a Papua New Guinea stool !?

Here's another article (dated around the same time) about his TIKIS (!), curiously here he claims to have been shipwrecked in the Marquesas! The Marianas seem more likely, I don't think Americans had much action in the Marquesas in WWII:

The Ku in the back looks like the one that was imported to Hawaii for the Ilikai, BOT p.247

And last, another nice line up of his characters, the PNG bird man also ended up at the Tiki Kai (see photo with stripper on page 1). This one will be in my new book:

That's all, folks! :)