Tiki Bob’s logo

I’ve sometimes been heard to disparage certain tiki designs as being too “cartoony,” but this actually is not my complaint. Great, goofy, stylized tiki designs have been around since the start of the tiki craze, as exemplified by the logo for Tiki Bob’s in San Francisco, which I love. Of course, the appeal of stylized tikis varies greatly — there are people who can’t stand the Tiki Bob design (hi Pablus!), just as I can’t stand a lot of the stylized designs I see.

Well, here is a goofy, cartoony tiki design that I love. Four of them, in fact! New Zealand-based illustrator Onno Knuvers says he quickly put this together for his portfolio. The colors chosen and the style give it a fun mid-’60s look without feeling like an obvious, cliched attempt at something “retro.” That is probably a large part of the appeal for me. They’re instantly recognizable as tikis, but they still manage to be a fresh take on tiki design. Most of all, they’re just well done by a talented illustrator.

Knuvers’ blog is fairly new, and he doesn’t have any other tiki work on it (indeed, he seems to indicate that this was done as a bit of a lark).

• Tikis [Onno Knuvers]
• Tiki Bob’s, San Francisco [Critiki]

Aussie tiki carver, Marcus Thorn

This past spring, I had the great pleasure of spending a few days with Tiki Beat‘s Marcus Thorn, and his wife Yvette. Marcus is a fantastic tiki carver, he’s been making a living at his art the past decade-plus — he is in high demand in his native Australia, and his tikis have found homes all over the globe. Marcus and Yvette have been a fixture in Australia’s rockabilly scene for ages, and are very happy that Australia is finally developing a bit of a tiki scene, as well. A bit over a year ago, Marcus joined in with the band of merry carvers at Tiki Central, and has been sharing in-progress pictures of many of his carvings on a thread of his own. Marcus and Yvette are incredibly gracious people, and care a lot about giving their customers the best bang for their tiki-buying buck — every year they host a great big luau for their friends and customers at their ranch/estate outside Brisbane.

• Tiki Beat
• tikis by marcus thorn [Tiki Central]

Bay Park Buzzy has posted a series of images of lovely stamps from New Zealand, dating from 1915 through the 1980s, featuring Maori imagery. Images depicted in the stamps include tikis, war clubs, tattoos, and moments in Maori history.

• New Zealand Maori Stamps 1915-1980 [Tiki Central]

• the tiki taboo, sydney [Tiki Central]

This was knitted by a girl in New Zealand, and she based it on Maori tiki designs. I must admit that I wouldn’t have recognized it as such without the helpful comparison images. It’s cute, though. The webpage is in French, and here’s the same page translated through Google.

• Projet en cours… [Pikininiz]
• Project in progress… [Translated through Google]

New Zealand artist Dick Frizzell is a “renegade pop artist,” offering new perspectives of pervasive imagery. In the above piece, Mickey to Tiki Tu Meke, he creates a clever transition between two cultural icons. This lithograph is in the Christchurch Art Gallery in New Zealand; though it is not currently on display, the gallery does offer the image for sale on t-shirts, notecards and prints in its online shop.

• Mickey to Tiki Tu Meke [Christchurch Art Gallery]