Spurlin Island Chief ("Husband Killer") tiki mug

The Island Chief, also called the Husband Killer, is a ceramic tiki mug made by Spurlin Ceramics for The Islander, a Polynesian restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles.^[1][2][3] It was designed by Stella Bodey, and collectors often cite it as one of the first mugs made in the shape of a tiki.^[4][5]

Description

The mug is a tall, stone-like standing tiki with a pointed head.^[1][2] The collector database mytiki.life gives its size as 3.25 inches wide by 8.75 inches high, holding 16 fluid ounces, with "Islander" engraved on the bottom. It describes the glaze as a muddy brown with yellow highlights that was used on several Spurlin pieces.^[1] An eBay seller whose listing is archived on WorthPoint also noted "Islander" on the base.^[3] Oceanic Arts, which sold Spurlin's work, kept an orange-glazed sample of the mug, 8.75 inches tall. It was offered at the firm's April 2022 auction.^[6]

In a 2012 Tiki Central post, the Book of Tiki author Sven Kirsten wrote that the tiki on the mug and on its matching bowl was likely based on a tiki carved by Demetrio Chavez.^[5] PinTiki's 2018 article on the mug repeats the attribution and says Oceanic Arts confirmed it.^[2]

Use at the Islander

The Islander, which opened in 1959, used the mug to serve one drink, the Husband Killer.^[4][1] According to PinTiki, the drink was listed under the "strong" heading of the Islander's cocktail menu, which grouped drinks as mild, medium and strong.^[2] Spurlin also made a matching Island Chief scorpion bowl, held up by three pointed-head tikis, and salt-and-pepper shakers.^[7][8][4] A Tiki Central collector called the mug the Islander's "signature" tiki mug, although it does not match the restaurant's logo tiki.^[9]

Date

Sources differ on the date. mytiki.life lists the mug as circa 1961–1971.^[1] However, PinTiki reproduces a 1960 Life magazine photograph of an Islander patron drinking from it, and a Tiki Central member reported that Getty Images dates the Life photographs to August 1960.^[2][5] Kirsten's 2012 timeline placed Bodey's Islander mugs in the late 1950s, with a question mark over 1957, 1958 or 1959. He noted that Oceanic Arts' owners remembered them as the first tiki mugs they had seen, but that no dated printed evidence had been found.^[5] Modern makers and sellers describe it as an early-1960s design.^[10][11]

Copies and reissues

The pointed-head design was widely copied. Kirsten and other Tiki Central members wrote that the Japanese importer Otagiri Mercantile Company (OMC) obtained Spurlin's Islander pieces around 1960 and copied the mug and bowl. They say OMC later supplied the Islander and made the design for other restaurants.^[5][12] OMC versions about 8 inches tall, with an OMC Japan sticker, turn up in the collector market. So do black versions of unknown make, shipped in boxes labeled "Made in Japan".^[13][14]

Modern reissues include:

• a green Tiki Farm version (2003) and a yellow Tiki Farm version made for a 2003 event at the Hawaiian Room in Bellflower, California;^[15][16]
• Bauer Pottery versions (2018), including one for the 60th anniversary of the Tonga Hut;^[11][17]
• a 2024 limited edition of 100 by Bauer for the Tiki Maniacs shop and Arizona's Superstition Village Tiki Marketplace, which the seller says was cast from the original molds.^[10][18]

Collecting

PinTiki, citing the Ooga-Mooga database, reported that an Island Chief mug sold on eBay for $180 in August 2018 and that, as of December 2017, a matching scorpion bowl had sold for $835.^[2] The seller of another bowl, in a listing archived on WorthPoint, dated it to about 1963. The seller said the only earlier eBay sale they could find was in 2012, at $499.^[8] WorthPoint also holds a listing for a 1960s OMC pointed-headdress mug that the seller describes as "inspired" by the Spurlin Islander design. It is not a Spurlin piece.^[13]