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MT26.2 The Princess and the Surfboard · The Downing Arts Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to the downing arts podcast.
• 0:06
  Freshers events have been in full swing this week, including a packed out undergraduate
• 0:10
  matriculation Evensong on Tuesday. I hope you're all settling in well and
• 0:14
  having a wonderful time this
• 0:19
  week. My guest is Jo, who's a PhD student here at Downing. Welcome, Jo.
• 0:23
  Hi, Louisa. Thanks for having me. Oh, it's a pleasure.
• 0:27
  I've been looking forward to this conversation for quite a while because your PhD
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  topic is quite unusual, isn't it? Yeah, no, it's very niche
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  and maybe a little bit out there even. We love it. We love it.
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  So, yeah. What are you doing? So I am
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  based in the archaeology department, but my PhD is sort of in
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  museum studies and anthropology. The sort of big title is Kalai
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  and Moving Monuments. Moving, which means canoe carvers in Hawaiian.
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  And then I talk about canoes as moving monuments because
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  I'm looking at ones that are in the colonial archive. So in the uk,
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  the us, but also in Hawaii itself.
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  Fantastic. Gosh. And do you have any links to Hawaii or,
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  I mean, what sparked your interest?
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  No, no, everyone always asks that and it makes total sense to
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  ask that question, but. So I grew up on an island
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  in Canada and which I
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  suppose influenced me a lot. I've always lived very near the coast and near the
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  sea and there was a very large indigenous population where I grew up as well.
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  So Hawaii is like an independent kingdom at a certain point
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  that was all indigenous royal family.
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  It's very inspiring to me. And there's a lot of overlaps
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  between water culture and the kind of waterman which excites me.
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  So that's what got me interested. Wow. And what
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  did you do for undergrad? I mean, did you have an opportunity to start exploring
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  it then? Yeah. So I did archaeology at the
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  University of Southampton and Southampton has a really well
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  known, quite well developed maritime archaeology sort of
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  pathway. So I ended up doing a master's in maritime archaeology.
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  So it sort of would draw you to as
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  watery a place as you could get and.
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  Yeah, brilliant. The podcast topic is basically your
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  PhD. Yes. So, yeah. Do you
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  want to tell us a little bit about the carvings and so on? Yeah.
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  So I sort of wanted to talk about a particular
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  surfboard that is held in the main museum in Hawaii,
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  so the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum. And it's a particularly special board
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  because it was owned by the last Princess of Hawaii, Kaiulani,
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  who really tragically died at 23.
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  Yes. Yeah. But she was educated for a long time in the UK as
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  like a preteen and I think maybe I'm particularly inspired by that
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  because I moved to the UK at about the same age, maybe 13 as well.
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  So it's got parallels for me personally, but. So what's unique about this
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  surfboard is that it was given to this museum, but was
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  likely her personal surfboard. And it has a repair
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  on it that's called a pew, which is also called
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  a butterfly or a Flying Dutchman repair because it looks like a
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  little butterfly. So within Hawaiian tradition, it's called pewa,
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  and they're used usually to create.
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  Create a kind of beautiful style of repair on a wooden bowl.
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  But in this instance, it's been used on a surfboard instead.
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  But it's also a tradition in European carving and.
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  And woodwork. And that's why where we get the term the Flying Dutchman. So it's.
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  It's unclear if they. They were sort of. Who had the idea first, but you
• 3:53
  can find it in both traditions. Wow. Yeah. And when you.
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  So when you say surfboard, I mean, I'm imagining I'm
• 4:01
  picturing a surfboard. Yes. You know, does it.
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  Is it a surfboard in the sense that we would think of a surfboard?
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  Yeah. So what's interesting is that it actually
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  is. So it's about 2 meters in length, so it's bigger than the average,
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  I guess you'd say, or maybe, like, for a common beginner board,
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  it's a similar size, but. And similar shape.
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  So in ancient Hawaiian surfing traditions, there were four main
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  types. But this particular type, the Alia type,
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  is the kind of surfboard that inspired all surfboards
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  that are used today. Oh. Yeah.
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  So, but there were ones that were 18ft in
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  lengths, like five. More than five meters. And those were used by, like, higher chiefs
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  and called OLO boards, Very special massive boards. But this
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  one. This one is a bit smaller, which makes sense because. Cause it was used
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  by a sort of smaller woman. But then it also gives you versatility with the
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  waves. It doesn't matter what size. It's like, a little bit more easy to use
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  wherever you want. Yeah, yeah.
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  So it actually is really common to what you would think, but it's made of
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  acacia koa, which is like a very particular and traditional
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  style of type of wood that you'd use in the Hawaiian Islands.
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  Wow. So it's all very, very traditional. And it
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  sounds. It sounds quite sustainable. Is that a silly thing to say?
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  Yeah, no, definitely, it's. Well, it's interesting because I think it's
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  much less sustainable now in that the forests were used quite
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  extensively. To create this massive war fleet of canoes
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  in the 1800s.
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  So surfing itself has a history that predates the colonization of Hawaii
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  and dates back to 500 BCE. So in Central Polynesia,
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  so then and up until Kailani's
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  board in 18, sort of 1860, 1870 or
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  thereabouts, the boards would have been created for the particular person.
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  So it's pre industrial. So they're created for you the kind of where. Bespoke.
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  Yes, yeah, bespoke, exactly. Yeah. So you get a bespoke
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  made board and it would have been very sustainable and made from different
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  floating woods and floating materials. But acaciacoa is particularly special in Hawaii
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  now because it isn't as frequently found and
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  has been pretty extensively harvested. So it's very expensive these
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  days to get something, a piece of wood that size.
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  So if you have a bespoke board made for you,
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  presumably you can have a say in what it looks like in terms
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  of artwork and so on. Is that the case? Yeah,
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  definitely. Now, uh, it's an incredibly popular thing
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  among board designers and builders to like create all kinds of
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  art and inlay it on top of resin and things like that. But actually
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  in Hawaii it's very sort of functional kind
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  of artistic style. So it's all about the clean lines and like a utilitarian
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  kind of art. So there weren't really designs on boards, which is what
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  makes this board kind of interesting to me because it has these peva little
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  butterfly shapes were used to repair it. So what
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  we see is like the evidence of the fact that Kailani came back from the
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  UK in her education and went back to Hawaii
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  and rode the board again, potentially breaking it, but wanting to keep using
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  it. And so creating these pevas, probably not
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  her, but definitely she, she felt it was important to maintain the board.
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  So what's unique is that it does have a kind of stylistic specialty. But usually
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  they all look fairly similar except for their size,
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  shape and maybe a little bit of difference in the rocker. So, like the way
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  it would sit in the water. So if she was royalty, would she
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  have had a coat of arms or a crest or something as well?
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  Yeah, so the Hawaiian royalty,
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  I think, did have a crest that they made for the government specifically.
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  Um, yeah, that was designed by Hawaiians and
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  then co, opted, I think later by the United States government after the illegal annexation
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  or illegal overthrow and then later annexation in
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  the late 1800s. But yeah, no, she did.
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  Wow. And. And can you tell us a bit about the canoes, because did
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  they have artwork on them as well? No, so, so,
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  yeah, I suppose with the canoes you also get these interesting repair techniques
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  as well. So I've seen canoes where the peva technique has been used,
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  the butterfly patches and very careful kind of
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  repairs that are different sort of wedge shapes in the wood and they're
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  made to look aesthetic in the repair.
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  But again, so it's very different to sort of oceanic canoes generally
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  and then Polynesian canoes, which usually have all kinds of adornment.
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  Hawaii is very like clean and functional, but you
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  would have had kind of like a pennant or like a standard feathers
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  flying from the top of a canoe, which might be different colors and relate to
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  a different chief. And then sails would often have designs on them as well that
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  would relate to different islands or chiefs. So again, when you
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  say canoes, so I'm, you know, I'm picturing a canoe. Are we talking
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  about canoes in this? I mean, obviously not the canoes. You see people canoeing
• 9:29
  on the cam or whatever. But are they canoes in
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  that sort of sense? That. Yeah. So it's interesting the sort of distinction I find
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  in the uk people use the word canoe as a kind of catch all for
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  lots of different kinds of small craft. So you have a kayak where you
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  paddle, holding a kind of bar that has two paddles on either side.
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  That's very different to a canoe which you would paddle with a single
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  paddle and kind of is shaped fairly differently when
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  you sit in it in the water. But Hawaiian canoes are kind of similar
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  to the rowboats that you have on the cam in the sense that they're
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  very sort of narrow when you sit in them, you have to manage your balance
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  a little bit. But the way Hawaiian canoes manage the balance is with an outrigger,
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  so they have an extra smaller piece of wood that comes across instead
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  of using the paddles to balance and keep you stable. So you
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  still have to use quite a lot of core strength, I think, to keep stable.
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  Yeah, but no. So, yeah, it is what you're imagining. But then
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  these canoes could be 80ft in length or 5ft
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  and very small. So some of what I've studied are they're very small models
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  that you could hold in your hand. And then there's four canoes that
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  are massive. So there's a lot of rain because I've never seen a canoe
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  with feathers or a pendant. So I mean, how would
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  they. I mean, would they be at a certain end or which. How would they
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  fix them on? So it depends on the size
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  of the canoe. But you can rig it with a sail so that the sail
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  kind of sits in the middle. Or, I mean, you can move it a lot
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  of the time. And so in a process that I think is called shunting.
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  So you can have move the sail so that it's either one end of the
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  canoe or another, which is a way to kind of change your direction.
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  But so you would have feathers at the top of the master kind of thing
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  of the sail and the canoe itself. The actual body would often be black
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  because it was painted in a kind of like pitch button materials.
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  And then the kind of gunwale. The second little layer
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  to the canoe that's slightly higher up would be yellow because that canoe was traditionally
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  made of a yellow sort of wood. Yeah. So all very lacquered and
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  very varnished. And then the sails are the more decorative elements, I suppose.
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  Yeah. And how wild did they go? How wild did
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  they go? Like, how wild were the decorations? Yeah,
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  yeah, I think so. The shape of the sails could be
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  really interesting. So some of them were like a massive heart shape. Oh, wow.
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  Yeah. But the traditional kind of shape is what you call like a crab claw
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  shape. So it's. If you can imagine a crab claw, it's like
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  a triangle, but then with like a dip sort of along the
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  long end. I'm imagining a giant crab on top of a canoe because
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  presumably the. The shape must affect the. The way it is in the water or
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  the, you know, the kind of efficiency or whatever. Not that I know anything
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  about anything really. But yeah, yeah, it can do.
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  It can do. But then. So a lot of Hawaiian canoes
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  would also use that paddling power of the. The crew kind of thing powering through
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  the water. And they have really large paddles that would almost fit
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  well. Very, very large. Much bigger than. So like
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  a Canadian canoe paddle, for example, which are fairly small.
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  But they also, when. When meeting sort
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  of European vessels for the first time, they would rig their ships in that style
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  to kind of mimic European style sail. And that's been argued because
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  the technology allows you to catch more of the wind. But also
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  it creates this kind of mental dissonance. So there are recordings of Hawaiian
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  chiefs coming round an island, kind of promontory, and someone
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  seeing it and thinking, oh, that's a European vessel. I know which one that is.
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  When actually it was rigged in the European style.
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  Wow. It's very interesting. Yeah. Gosh. And just
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  going back to the surfboards. I know. Did you say the princess's
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  surfboard is in a museum in Hawaii? Yes. Yeah, yeah.
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  Are There any others that are particularly noteworthy? Yeah.
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  So there's quite a big collection, kind of unsurprisingly, in the Hawaiian
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  Museum, and most of them are of that style of board
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  that I was talking about that is kind of where all common boards descend from,
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  so the Alaya style. But there are some Ola boards and some capo
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  boards. I think I'm saying that. Right. Which are quite small and they use more
• 13:56
  like children or like body surfing kind of thing, which a lot of people have
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  done. So. So in the uk, for sale, a lot
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  of places you can find like a pipe, a paper board and it's just like
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  a very small children's board. Yeah. So Duke Kahanemoku,
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  the kind of famous Hawaiian that went to the Olympics and
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  earned lots of medals and became a Hollywood star in, like, the 1920s,
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  his board is also kept there. Yeah. And there's. So what interests me is the
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  overlap where Hawaiians brought surfing to the UK and
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  they're. So I'm not sure that there's any evidence that Kaiulani surfed
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  in the uk, but some of her cousins or relatives in the Hawaiian family did.
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  So Prince Kuhiu and his brother or
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  cousin, I'm not quite sure, but they surfed in Yorkshire, of all places in Yorkshire.
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  Wow. Yeah. In the 1890s, they surfing
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  to the local populace there and they loved it.
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  In this letter that they. They wrote about, they really enjoyed surfing there.
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  So there's a museum in Devon that has a few Hawaiian
• 15:00
  surfboards and a replica made by a Hawaiian,
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  Tom Pohaku Stone, who created an Olo board for their exhibition.
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  Specifically. What a fascinating PhD subject.
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  I mean. Yeah, it's been really interesting talking to you about it.
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  So, yeah, good luck with everything and thanks for coming on the show. Thanks so
• 15:20
  much, Louisa. It's a great chat.
• 15:26
  This week in college. The matriculation service for postgraduates
• 15:30
  takes place this evening in the chapel at 6pm with music by Bach and
• 15:34
  Brewer. The current Heon Gallery exhibition, Ten Good Years comes to an end
• 15:38
  on Sunday, so do catch it, if you haven't already. Tickets for the forthcoming
• 15:43
  big band roulette event on Saturday 24th October, are now on sale.
• 15:46
  See the show notes for details. Whether or not you're new to Downing,
• 15:50
  I hope the term has started. Well, thanks for listening.