Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 17, Number 7, 1 July 2000 — Record price for ʻahu [ARTICLE]

Record price for ʻahu

David Lindal, a Kapahulu decorator, recently purchased, at a record price, a newly cleaned and restored 19th-century Hawaiian feather eape at a Sotheby's auehon in New York City. The eape was sold May 19 for $335,750, reported the Junel 1 New York Times. It had resided for more than a eentury in Canada's Niagara Falls Museum before being bought, along with the museum's name and the rest of its inventory, by Wilham Jamieson of Toronto and one of his friends. Because the museum has changed hands so many times since its 1827 founding, there is no record of how or when the eape was originally acquired. A description in the auction catalogue says the "rare and magnificent Hawaiian feather eape of flat semicircular form," 27" by 16", is "constracted in a woven knotted fiber ground of olanā, the ground of yellow 'ō'ō feathers, an arc with red 'i'iwi feathers on the bottom and black 'ō'ō feathers on the top, two red arching triangles on either side, and a band of altemating sections of red, black and yellow feathers around the neek." Explaining to Ka Wai Ola how he learned the eape was for sale, Lindal said,"I'm a big buyer of Hawaiian things." So when such objects are put up for auction, Sotheby's lets him know. Lindal has already resold the eape to an O'ahu collector who will display it in an 1 880s koa showcase containing other featherwork and secular Hawaiian art. "It's so niee to bring these things back to Hawai'i," Lindal added. "They get so scattered. I'm sure this eape will end up in a public collection. The buyer is very civic-minded."

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