Georgia O'Keeffe and Hana, Maui - Koki Beach

O'Keeffe in Hana, 1939.  Source: Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

I recently spent some time in Hana, Maui, and learned that American artist Georgia O'Keeffe visited the area in the 1930s.  Although she is closely identified with the desert of New Mexico, O'Keeffe painted several canvases of the striking tropical scenery of Hawaii.

“Black Lava Bridge, Hana Coast No. 1,” 1939, by Georgia O'Keeffe. Source: NYT

O'Keeffe was commissioned by the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (later Dole) to create images to be used in their advertisements.  In early 1939, she traveled by steamer to Honolulu and spent two months in the islands.  In Hana, she stayed with the Jennings family, who owned the local sugar plantation, and their young daughter, Patricia, showed O'Keeffe the sights.   Patricia Jennings later wrote a book describing her adventures with the artist.

Lava bridge from Koki beach.

One of the sites they visited was the lava arch visible from Koki beach.  Judging from the photograph, O'Keeffe and Jennings were on the bluff a bit closer than Koki beach, but there is currently no public access there (I hear Oprah Winfrey owns that land?).

Ka Iwi O Pele to the right--you can just see tiny people at the base of the hill.  The lava arch is out in the distance.

Koki is a noted spot in Hawaiian mythology.  Pele, the goddess of fire, was killed by her sister and Pele's bones are said to form the red cinder hill at the north end of the beach (called Ka Iwi O Pele).  Her spirit then fled to the Big Island and took up residence in the Kilauea volcano.

O'Keeffe visited other sites in Hana that I recognized--part of the Jennings' home has been incorporated into the Travaasa Hana Hotel and she went to see a movie in the building that now houses the Hasegawa General Store.

Also on O'Keeffe's tour of Hana was Wai'anapanapa, with its black sand beach and jagged black cliffs. 

Black sand beach at Wai'anapanapa State Park

Cliffs and blowhole at Wai'anapanapa State Park

After she returned from the islands, O'Keeffe exhibited at least 20 paintings with Hawaiian subjects.  Hana yielded the starkest of the images, but others included lush tropical flowers, the I'ao Valley and coiled fishing lines.  It took some time, but O'Keeffe finished her works for the firm that sent her to Hawaii and her painting of a spiky pineapple plant, among others, was used in an advertisement. 

Dole ad, 1939, with O'Keeffe pineapple painting.

Several of O'Keeffe's Hawaiian paintings are in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art and will travel to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum for an exhibition titled Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: The Hawai'i Pictures, which runs through September 14, 2014.  For more info click here.

For more info, see this article in the New York Times.

Unless noted, all photos are ©Jeni Sandberg.

Gale Turnbull’s Coastline Dinnerware for Vernon Kilns

I’ve already declared my love of maps here--and now look what I found:  maps on plates!   The Coastline pattern by Vernon Kilns, from the late 1930s.

Vernon Kilns Coastline-- Michigan dinner plate

I’ve mentioned Gale Turnbull and Vernon Kilns before here when I talked about Don Blanding’s Lei Lani and Hawaiian Flowers patterns.   These plates date to about the same time (1936/1937) and were apparently designed by Turnbull himself.  He seems to have had a taste for the ocean, as he designed this pattern as well as the ‘Marine’ pattern, which depicted sailing ships, coastal towns and other nautical scenes.

Louisiana and Long Island

When I found these plates they were all lined up on plate stands and at first I couldn’t quite tell what they were.  And then I recognized Long Island!   The fragments of coastline are abstracted to the point where, at first glance, even the most familiar locations seem strange (especially when not in a north-south orientation!).

Two California plates--San Francisco and Los Angeles

I have seven 8 ½ inch plates (salad? lunch?) and one larger 9 ½ inch plate.  The design is hand painted (though I would guess that the lettering of the place names was a transfer).  The pattern was used on several sizes of plates and bowls as well as cups and saucers, tumblers, a carafe and other pieces.

Cape Cod

Delaware and New Jersey

There seems to be a shamefully scant amount of information on this pattern.  The book on Vernon Kilns gives a very partial list of the breakdown of what section of coastline is shown on which pieces, and a few images--but I have not found much else (one more image in California Pottery).

Detail of San Francisco

Are there pieces that cover the entire US coastline?  I have seen plates of Florida, but they were in awful condition so I didn’t buy them (which I kind of regret now). What about Maine?  The Chesapeake Bay?  Northwest Coast?  Were the American territories depicted (because you know I’d give my left leg for Hawaii!)?  Could I collect all the pieces and lay them out like a giant outline of the country?  That would make me really happy, it would be like collecting Star Wars cards and I would have to get them all.

Mark on the Michigan dinner plate--the smaller plates just say 'Coastline' and do not identify the location

I have duplicates of some plates and I will offer those in my shop.  Meanwhile, the hunt continues for more Coastline!  Feel free to be in touch through my website if you can point me in the right direction.

© All text and images are copyright of Jeni Sandberg

Lei Lani and Hawaiian Flowers Dinnerware by Don Blanding for Vernon Kilns

Lei Lani and Hawaiian Flowers 9 1/2 inch plates, designed by Don Blanding for Vernon Kilns

I recently discovered the joys of Don Blanding’s poetry and illustrations, as seen in the lovely set of his notecards from the 1940s which I recently purchased and discussed here.  Now I am on the hunt for the dinnerware Blanding designed for Vernon Kilns in the 1930s--and happily, I found a couple plates to amuse me.

By the mid 1930s, Blanding had achieved success with the publication of numerous books of his poetry and illustrations.  He helped propagate the idea of Hawaii as an exotic paradise in books like Hula Moon, The Virgin of Waikiki, and his best known work, Vagabond’s House.

Vernon Kilns was one of ‘The Big Five’ California pottery manufacturers, based in Vernon, just south of downtown Los Angeles.  In 1936, the firm hired Gale Turnbull as artistic director to and he proceeded to hire three popular artists of the day to design dinnerware--Don Blanding, Rockwell Kent and Walt Disney.  (An aside--the Rockwell Kent pieces are awesome and I want some of the ‘Our America’ series and some Moby Dick plates!  The Disney dinnerware is not decorated with Snow White and Dumbo, but surprisingly pleasing all-over patterns of delicate leaves and pinecones.)

The plates I have are in the Lei Lani and Hawaiian Flowers patterns.  They are essentially the same--both use a transfer-printed center and border, but Lei Lani adds hand-painted details.  Both are on the ‘Ultra’ shape plate, very simple with a downward sloping rim and the pattern was later printed on slightly different pottery blanks.

Lei Lani became one of the most popular patterns produced by Vernon Kilns, and was available from the late 1930s into the mid 1950s.  Blanding’s linear style was well suited to this medium.   The dense profusion of tropical flowers has a feeling similar to English Chintzware of the previous decade, but Blanding’s treatment has a more stylized, modern feel.

Each piece in the line was signed with the pattern name and ‘Aloha, Don Blanding’ the artist’s standard greeting (he signed his books this way, too).

Hawaiian Flowers was available in the maroon color I have, as well as blue, pink and orange (the orange version is beautiful, like a delicious Hawaiian creamsicle!).

I’m on the hunt for more of Vernon Kilns dinnerware--in addition to the patterns I have, there is another floral pattern (the variations are called Glamour, Joy, Ecstasy and Delight!) and one with tropical fish.   Blanding’s designs are pretty desirable, hard to find, and not inexpensive...I’ll post on Blanding again as I find more pieces.

I occasionally offer some of my Blanding pieces in my Etsy shop--check it out here.


© All text and images are copyright of Jeni Sandberg

Vintage Hawaiiana - Ruth Taylor White Maps of Hawaii

I love maps.  I can stare at them for ages, remembering the places I have been and dreaming of the places I have yet to visit.   And look what I found--vintage maps of the Hawaiian islands by Ruth Taylor White from the 1930s.  Heaven!

Images were long used to enliven maps (think sea monsters in the oceans of 16th century examples), but pictorial maps found a wide audience in the 20th century.  As means of transportation improved, more people could travel to more places, leading to the increased need for maps.  A map could delineate the roads and geography of the place, but it could also be used as an enticement.  Clever and appealing pictures added to a map helped create an image of the place that made it irresistible.  This type of illustrated map is sometimes called a cartograph, or pictograph.

Signature on the Oahu map--Ruth would later drop her married name when signing her work

Enter Ruth Taylor--traveler, illustrator, cartographer. 

Born in 1899, Taylor and her family, like many, headed persistently west in the late 19th century, moving from East Coast to West in the span of about 20 years and finally settling in California. According to the 1920 US Census, Taylor seemed to be settling into a pretty normal life--she was married to Leonard White and living in Phoenix, Arizona.  Leonard was a life insurance salesman.  Two kids followed, and so did divorce.  With limited information, it’s easy to fill in the gaps and imagine a disastrous mismatch of temperaments, but all we know is that Ruth and her children moved to California and she began working as an illustrator.

From Art Deco Blog

Ruth’s artistic training is unclear, but her family proved to be very important in her future work.  Several of her early jobs were linked to her brother, Frank J. Taylor (1894-1972).  Frank was a journalist and writer, served in World War I, and attended Stanford University.  That school connection probably helped Ruth earn one of her early commissions, the cover of the November 1927 The Stanford Illustrated Review.  Her detailed style brings humorous life to the crowd attending a football game.

From the National Parks website

Ruth and her brother moved in an artistic and adventurous circle in the San Francisco area and the siblings shared an interest in the majestic nature found in the country's national parks.  Frank was married to Katherine Ames, who was also an author.  Like Frank, Ames was interested in nature and travel and she wrote books on nearby Yosemite National Park.  Her 1926 Lights and Shadows of Yosemite featured the first published photographs by Ansel Adams.  Frank wrote popular books on the national parks and Ruth provided illustrations for his 'Oh, Ranger!’ A Book About the National Parks (1928) and Grand Canyon Country (1930), both of which went into multiple printings.

Ruth’s style crystallized in the 1930s, when she was at her busiest and most peripatetic.  In the Spring of 1930, she left the kids at home in California and spent five weeks in Hawaii.  Her trip was likely prompted by a commission from the Hawaii Tourist Bureau to draw the maps of the Hawaiian islands that I just acquired, as printed versions turn up by 1931.  The four largest islands of Kauai, Oahu, Maui and the Big Island and a map of the entire island chain are included in the set, which would have been handed out by the Bureau to visitors.

Massachusetts, from Our USA:  A Gay Geography, 1935.  From Barry Lawrence Ruderman.

These Hawaiian maps may have been the seed for a larger project Ruth undertook, again with her brother Frank.  Our USA:  A Gay Geography, published in 1935, was an atlas filled with whimsical and charming maps of all the states in the union, as well as American territories.  The New York Times said in their review, ‘Any one who remembers his childhood efforts to visualize Kentucky as something more than the green spot on the map, or New York as the pink State, will appreciate this volume. Brilliantly colored pictorial maps of the same order which have been amusing adults for the past decade show the United States and their Territories as active, picturesque entities.’ (NYT, 17 Nov 1935).  This book is very tough to find these days, even in libraries, and sadly is most often found dismembered to sell the maps individually.

This is where I live now--Hagerstown, Maryland, at the top left.  There is indeed an organ factory here.  From Saturated Color on Etsy.

So now you have the background for my sweet maps of Hawaii.  These are likely later reprints from the 1940s of Taylor's original 1930 illustrations, published by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, and given out by the Tourist Bureau to servicemen.  The nice woman from whom I bought these four maps said that her father got them in Hawaii when he was there during World War II and that they had been rolled up in the original mailing tube ever since.

Taylor’s maps aren’t about geographical exactitude, but rather the people and character of the place--what will lure you there and what you will remember when you have left.   And this is decidedly a rich white folks’ view of the islands--people with the money and leisure time to travel were the intended audience of these maps (discussions of imperialism will have to wait for another post).  Golf courses, yacht clubs and polo grounds are generally noted, but so, too, are heiaus (temples), locations connected to Hawaiian royalty and traditional island activities such as hula, surfing and hukilau (a type of net fishing).  Taylor devised a palatable combination of the familiar and exotic, an ideal paradise for tourists.

I’m fascinated by these views into Hawaii’s past.  So much has changed (some might say not necessarily for the better), but many places and their attributes are comfortingly the same.  The big banyan tree is still in Lahaina, there are still surfers in Hanalei Bay and coffee still grows in Kona.  It’s interesting to see so many more Hawaiian place names used, the vast pineapple and sugar fields that are no more and the old churches that can still be found dotting the landscape.

Ruth Taylor, Map of Treasure Island, Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, 1939.  From Beinecke Library, Yale.

Ruth Taylor continued to travel. In 1939, at the age of 40, she was in Japan (she did a map of the Philippines that may date from that trip) and as political tensions increased in Asia, she wisely returned home to the San Francisco area.  That year, she rendered a cartograph of Treasure Island, the site of the Golden Gate International Exposition, a copy of which can be found at Beinecke Library at Yale.

Remarkably, during World War II, Ruth kept up her international wandering.  The end of the war found her in Calcutta, India, and by September 1945 she arrived back in New York, headed to her brother’s home in Los Altos, California.  The wine map of California below is the only work I've found of hers in the post-war years.

Wine map of California by Taylor, late 1940s.  From Barry Lawrence Ruderman.

I haven’t been able to find out a lot more about Ruth Taylor in her later years, but would love to learn more about her and her work.  This little bit of research was pretty quickly done and I didn’t have access to all the resources I would have liked (I live in the boonies, remember).   There are many more avenues to be explored!  If you have any corrections, or additional information about her, please do be in touch.


© All text and images are copyright of Jeni Sandberg 2012-2018