THE SPECS
Brand: Cooke Street
Print: Canoe diagrams
THE MATERIAL
The shirt I featured in the first post (No. 001) was a 55% polyester-45% cotton blend and I compared it to a chambray type feel. This is shirt is probably a higher percentage of cotton than No. 001. It wrinkles and feels extremely light.
THE DESIGN
Intricate canoe diagrams as art became a sensation in the late 1970s, largely thanks to Hawaiian historian, artist, and sailor Herbert Kawainui Kāne. While I am not sure who designed this shirt or when, I’m fairly confident that the shirt was made in the 1980s. I want to talk about Kāne’s artform and research process in conversation with another excellent source for the study of waʻa of Hawai'i and of the Pacific which Kāne consulted while developing his most famous design, Hōkūleʻa.
Canoes of Oceania
Unlike many of his anthropology colleagues, English ethnographer James Hornell argued that Pacific Islanders were intelligent seafarers who voyaged, migrated, and settled the archipelagos of Oceania both near and far. Hornell took a particular interest in voyaging knowledge which he observed was not as prevalent in the Pacific by the early twentieth-century, “Another subject that received special attention concerned the extent and character of the knowledge formerly possessed by the South Sea peoples of the art and practice of navigation. Their skill as deep-sea sailors has usually been greatly underestimated, particularly by the early circumnavigators whose labors might well have been more fruitful and successful had they appreciated at its full worth the comparatively extensive knowledge of the seaways of the Pacific possessed by certain Pacific islanders.”
Realizing that artists aboard the nineteenth-century western expeditions of the Pacific seldom took detailed illustrations of canoe structures, Hornell undertook two major expeditions of the region to study, diagram, and learn about Pacific canoe construction. He described his research aims as such, “The foremost aim of my work has been to collect, correlate, and arrange all the known and available details of canoe construction as it is or was characteristic of each island group in order that the student of racial migration may have all the help possible from this source.” In 1924, the St. George Expedition allowed him the opportunity to visit the Marquesas, Tuamotus, and the Society Islands. The year following, Hornell traveled to Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji on his second expedition funded by the Percy Sladen Trust.
Between 1936 and 1938, the Bishop Museum published three volumes by Alfred Cort Haddon, a British ethnologist with research interests also in the Pacific, and Hornell as a part of the Special Publications series (Special Publications 27, 28, 29). Volume One is dedicated to the canoes of Polynesia, Fiji and Micronesia, Volume Two to the canoes of Melanesia, Queensland, and New Guinea. The third volume is a definition of terms used, a general survey of the authors’ findings and conclusions. Each volume includes detailed sketches, diagrams, and historical photos and sketches from the different island groups. The three volumes were published into a single volume for the first time as Canoes of Oceania in 1975. Canoes was reprinted a second time in 1991 and a third time most recently in 2017. Prior to the most recent publication by Bishop Museum Press, Canoes of Oceania, was a highly sought after and expensive book, fetching $600+ a copy.
HERB KAWAINUI KĀNE
As Hornell and A. C. Haddon were writing the manuscript for Canoes of Oceania, Herbert Kawainui Kāne was growing up in the rural American Midwest. Born to a Hawaiian-Chinese father and a Danish-American mother in 1928, Kāne was grew up in the farming community of Marshfield, Wisconsin, about 150 miles west of Green Bay, where his father was an optometrist. However, in interviews about his childhood, Kāne emphasized the impact that visiting his fatherʻs home island of Hawaiʻi had on him. It was in Kona that he had his first sailing experience, “My first sailing experience was as an eight year old. I was living in Hilo, but Dad liked to go to Kona for fishing. I went out with an elderly fisherman one day. After hand-lining his catch, he unrolled the mast and sail and set up the mast and told me to get out on the ʻiako (the boom connecting the canoe hull to the outriggered float). Then he trimmed the sail to the onshore breeze and the canoe took off. It was like being on the back of a bird.” It was also on Hawaiʻi Island that Kāne was exposed to painting. In 1935, Kāne visited a gallery show of D. Howard Hitchcock whose landscapes of the island captured his attention and interest.
Kāne joined the US Navy at 17 and worked with the Chinese Nationalist Army as a meteorologist in Shanghai. Following his return stateside, Kāne enrolled in college through the G.I. Bill. He received degrees from the School of Art Institute at the University of Chicago. After graduating, Kāne used his art skills and worked in advertising design in Chicago, illustrating books and magazines including Playboy and Esquire. He also worked closely with architects, developing an interest in architectural drafting. After ten years working in Chicago, he moved to Honolulu in 1972, working as a design consultant for Administration Inc., a subsidiary of C. Brewer & Co. and later Amfac.
Following his move to Hawaiʻi, Kāne resumed his interest in canoe drawings and noticed that the drawings were inaccurate. He also noted that despite a healthy, local paddling culture, a formative book on Hawaiian canoes had never been published. Kāne delved into research on canoe making and history. He studied the information in Canoes of Oceania, visited museums, and read first hand accounts of Pacific sailing by European explorers. The product of his research was his first major series called “Canoes of Polynesia”. Completed at the end of 1972, the series consisted of 14 oil paintings and 13 architectural drawings of canoes. Kāne drew from his own experience on the sea, voyaging chants, descriptions and sketches of canoes by European voyagers, and discussions with anthropologists Tui Terrance Barrow, Bishop Museum’s Kenneth Emory, and Ben R. Finney to guide is artistic process. The series featured canoes of Hawaii, Marquesas, Tuamotus, New Zealand, Cook Islands, Tahiti, Austral Islands, Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji and were acquired by the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. Kāne received wide acclaim for this work which was on view at the Lt. Governor’s office. His work was was featured in numerous newspaper articles at the time.
The year following, Kāne was approached by Ben R. Finney and asked if he wanted to help build a Hawaiian double-hulled voyaging (waʻa kaulua) canoe. Kāne, Finney, and sailor Charles Tommy Holmes co-founded the Polynesian Voyaging Society in 1973. Over the next three years, Kāne acted as the primary designer and construction supervisor of the Hōkūleʻa, a 60-foot, Hawaiian-style, double-hulled canoe. The initial voyage was planned to launch on April 1, 1976 from Honolulu to Tahiti and back, coinciding in part with the bicentennial celebration of America’s Independence in 1776. Hōkūleʻa’s main purpose was to demonstrate that Hawaiians could complete long-distance voyages without the assistance of navigation instruments, an argument that James Hornell and many Hawaiians consistently argued during the first half of the twentieth-century. Kāne said of voyaging critics, “Some critics hold that the earliest Polynesians were not capable of navigating over such long distances. But weʻll use stars as latitude and compass indicators.” Hōkūleʻa’s first voyage launched from Honolua Bay, Maui on 1 May 1976 with Yapese master navigator Mau Piailug at her helm. After 22 days at sea, Hōkūleʻa arrived in Tahiti, dispelling all previous speculation that Polynesian settlement was intentional and not by chance.
The same year as Hōkūleʻa’s inaugural sail, Kāne published his book, “Voyage”, a story of discovery by valley called Te Henua’enana who settled in Waipiʻo. For this project, Kāne used acrylic paint because it dried quickly and allowed the work to move forward. This was different from large paintings in oil and alkyd resin paint gesso-grounded linen canvas which he enjoyed using because it lengthened the time for painting and allowed for more reflection, deliberation, and time for refinement and detail. The art in the book features a number of sublime seascapes that show the different personalities of the ocean between Kahiki and Hawaiʻi. The book features a number of detailed portraits of the crew’s characters which is different from Kāne’s usual subjects of choice.
James Hornell and A. C. Haddon wrote their manuscript with the belief that Pacific navigating was possible. Their careful and timely research helped paved the path for Herb Kāne who less than 50 years after Canoes of Oceania’s publication, utilized that knowledge to design Hōkūleʻa, a new waʻa kaulua that would be sailed using ʻike kupuna. Hōkūleʻa ushered in what was called the Great Canoe Revival and the Second the Hawaiian Renaissance. Canoes and their symbolism to Pacific peoples continue to inspire art, discovery, and possibility.
For more information:
“4,000-Mile Canoe Journey Planned.” Marshfield News-Herald. 21 August 1974: 32.
“A Voyage to the Past.” The Honolulu Advertiser. 22 February 1976: 29.
“Canoes of Oceania.” (2017). Bishop Museum Press: Honolulu.
“Capitol show: ‘wisemen’ of sea.” (1972). Honolulu Star-Bulletin. 24 December 1972: 35.
“Children’s Exhibit.” Honolulu Star-Bulletin. 20 December 1972: 38.
“County Gets Bicentennial Seed Funds.” Hawaii Tribune-Herald. 4 September 1973: 3.
“Early days of Waipio recalled at reunion of old-timers.” (1968). Honolulu Star-Bulletin. 1 April 1968: 21.
“Hawaii-Tahiti canoe voyage backed.” The Honolulu Advertiser. 22 June 1973: 20.
“Hawaiian artist Herb Kane dies at 82.” (2011). Honolulu Star-Advertiser. 10 March 2011: 11.
“Herb Kane: Artist of Ancient Hawaii.” Honolulu Star-Bulletin. 7 July 2002: 49, 54.
