Large tiki · signed «Dave Shultz · HANG LOOSE»

A large tiki in solid wood, carved fully in the round: a wide-open mouth with bared teeth, heavy brows, arms across the body. The back carries a feathered scale pattern. The base is inscribed by hand: «Tiki · Dave Shultz · HANG LOOSE», with a date.

The vast majority of tikis are anonymous — production work from workshops nobody can name any more. This one is signed and dated, and that changes the starting point: the piece can be attributed to a hand, even though no further records for Dave Shultz are to hand. The addition «HANG LOOSE» — the shaka greeting of Hawaiian surf culture — places the work in the modern tiki scene, not an ethnographic context.

Carved from one block, with deep hollow cuts in the face and a cleanly maintained row of scales down the back — the part you turn to the wall when you stand it up, and which is finished anyway. The surface is stained and waxed; the wood shows pale fibre along the edges.

I cannot document who Dave Shultz is or was. Signature and date are clearly legible, and I claim nothing beyond that. Anyone who knows the name knows more than I do — for everyone else it is a large, boldly carved tiki with a recognisable hand behind it.

• Large tiki, solid wood
• Fully in the round, from one block
• Back worked through with a scale pattern
• Base signed «Tiki · Dave Shultz · HANG LOOSE», dated
• Stained and waxed
• Stands free

Good. The carving is complete, no teeth or edges broken out. Fine drying cracks run along the grain across the body — normal in a solid piece this size and without consequence for its strength. The base is flat and the figure stands securely.