Stella Bodey (née Spurlin)

Stella Bodey (14 January 1905 – 21 April 1971), born Stella Spurlin, was an American ceramicist. She ran Spurlin Ceramics of Lynwood, California. From the late 1950s the business made some of the earliest tiki mugs and communal drink bowls for Polynesian-themed restaurants, and much of its work was sold through Oceanic Arts, a decor firm in Whittier.^[1][2][3] Collector sources call her small company a seminal part of the tiki era.^[4][5]

Life

The collector database mytiki.life lists her as "Stella Bodey (aka Stella Bonnie Spurlin)". It says she was born in Los Angeles, married Douglas Raymond Bodey in 1923, lived for a time in Lynwood, and died in Sweet Home, Oregon.^[1] Spurlin, her maiden name, became the name of her ceramics business.^[1][6] A Find a Grave memorial for Stella B. Bodey matches these details. It gives her birth as 14 January 1905 in California and her death as 21 April 1971 in Linn County, Oregon. It records her burial at Mount Crest Abbey Mausoleum in Salem, Oregon, and links to a memorial for her husband, Douglas Raymond Bodey (1898–1977), in the same mausoleum.^[7]

The catalog for Oceanic Arts' April 2022 farewell auction describes Bodey as a high school ceramics teacher who started Spurlin Ceramics in the mid-1950s.^[2]

Early collector accounts confused her name. In December 2003 a Tiki Central member reposted a 2002 collector's note, credited to Mike's Tiki Gallery, that passed on an account from Oceanic Arts co-owner Bob Van Oosting. It credited the Islander restaurant's mugs to a "Betty Spurlin" who made them in a small kiln at her house and never marked them.^[8] The same month another member quoted an email in which Van Oosting credited Spurlin's pieces to Stella Bodey in Lynwood. Collectors have used that attribution since.^[3]

Work with Oceanic Arts

Bodey worked closely with Oceanic Arts (OA), the firm of Bob Van Oosting and LeRoy Schmaltz that outfitted Polynesian restaurants.^[1][2] In his 2003 email Van Oosting wrote that OA had represented her line of more than 25 tiki mugs and bowls and kept samples at its shop.^[3] According to the 2022 auction catalog, she sought out OA early on and left samples and prototypes in its showroom to attract orders. The catalog says these pieces are what gave OA's mug collection its "Holy Grail" status among collectors, and it calls a prototype of her Vicious Virgin drink bowl the centerpiece of the display cabinet.^[2]

Her best-known work was for The Islander, which opened in Los Angeles in 1959.^[9] For it she made the pointed-head Island Chief ("Husband Killer") mug with a matching scorpion bowl and shakers, the Cobra's Fang mug, the Headhunter mug used for the "Coffee Grog", and the "Vicious Virgin" mug and bowl.^{[9][10][11][2]} See Spurlin Island Chief tiki mug, Spurlin Cobra's Fang mugs and Spurlin Vicious Virgin mug and bowl. Collector databases and the OA auction catalogs also credit her with:

• coconut mugs, a rum barrel and a "Smog Cutter" mug for The Tahitian restaurants in Pasadena and Studio City, and the ceramic figure on the Tahitian's table lamp, which she based on Andres Bumatay's logo tiki;^[10][2]
• wood-grain Fog Cutter mugs, a lined-face Maori mug and drink bowls standing on three Maori figures for Sam's Seafood;^[10][2]
• ceramic tiki posts for restaurant table lamps, made for the lamp maker Illuminee Candlelite and for OA;^[12][2]
• a gold-glazed coconut for the lamps of the Coconut Palace lounge at the Coco Palms Resort on Kauai;^[2]
• a palm-tree mug for the nightclub Club Bonnie Rae;^[10][2]
• the OA Cobra Fang mug, which she created for OA to sell directly to clients, and which the April 2022 catalog calls the only mug OA offered in open production rather than for a single venue;^[2]
• turtle-design coconut mugs for OA's Inter-Island Resorts jobs in Hawaii, and a turtle-design coconut lamp for the InterContinental hotel in Samoa.^[2][13]

She is also credited with the open-mouthed tiki mug that OA supplied to the Mahi Mahi restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee.^[5] Sources disagree on who made it. The April 2022 auction catalog says OA engaged Bodey and Spurlin Ceramics for the job.^[2] mytiki.life says Bodey sculpted it but that Desert Ceramics made it, around 1968. A 2005 Tiki Central post relaying Van Oosting says she had sold the molds to Desert Ceramics, which produced the mug for OA.^[14][15]

The "first tiki mug" question

Bodey's Islander pieces are often described as among the first tiki mugs, meaning drinking vessels shaped like a tiki figure.^[4][16] In 2012 the Book of Tiki author Sven Kirsten, who posts on Tiki Central as "bigbrotiki", wrote that Van Oosting and Schmaltz remembered her Islander mugs as the first tiki mugs they had seen. He placed them in the late 1950s but noted that no dated printed evidence had been found. He considered the mug of Tiki Bob's in San Francisco, which opened in 1955, the likelier first.^[16] In the same discussion another member reported that Getty Images dates the Life magazine photographs of her Island Chief mug in use at the Islander to August 1960.^[16]

Sale of the business

mytiki.life says Bodey sold the business and its molds in the early 1960s, and that Desert Ceramics was using them by 1965.^[1] Later collector accounts put the sale at about 1965 or 1966. They say the molds went to Desert Ceramics of Palm Desert, California, and to Beauce Pottery in Quebec.^[17][18][2] One eBay seller writes that a moai design she had made as an OA sample went to Toby Designs.^[19] Her designs have since been reissued and copied by other makers.^[1]