By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

The most spectacular piece on display at the Honolulu Academy of Arts Handweaver's Hui is "Lion's Roar," a tapestry of vivid colors, electric yet elegant, made of Lion coffee bags.

This is not your loving-hands-of-home patchwork pillowcase. It's a work of art that won a prize in the juried show. A Japanese emperor's brocaded robe couldn't be more magnificent. The price: $850.

So what do you do with a breathtaking tapestry woven from coffee bags? I am delighted to report that I found a solution.

"You should see it," I told Advertiser education writer Beverly Creamer, who makes jewelry. "The colors are brilliant but not garish. It's playful and fun, not a neon sign. Elaina Malm, the weaver, said it took a five year's supply of coffee bags."

"The Lion coffee company should buy it," Beverly said immediately.

Why not? I called Hawaii Coffee Co. and got president Jim Wayman on the line. Having never peddled fine art before, I felt like Vincent van Gogh's brother, Theo, the one who sold the paintings. When Wayman learned that a prize-winning tapestry woven from Lion coffee bags was on the market, he said, "I'll buy it."

Then I called Malm at Kapi'olani Community College, where she teaches English as a second language, to tell her she had just sold the world's first Lion coffee bag tapestry. She was overwhelmed. Promoting the arts gave me a warm feeling.

Malm and Wayman sealed the deal Monday at the Academy's Linekona annex. Wayman didn't hesitate. "It's not what I expected at all," he said. "When I saw the tapestry it was like walking into Neiman Marcus and looking at an elegant evening gown. I couldn't believe it was made of coffee bags."

Malm, a weaving instructor at Koko Head District Park, said the tapestry took her a year to make working two hours every Saturday. She used household scissors to cut each coffee bag into a strip, in a spiral pattern starting at the top. One coffee bag yielded enough material to make two inches of the 2 1/2-foot-wide, 10-foot-long tapestry.

Malm uses as weaving material only things that she or other people throw away. She likes Lion coffee, drinks it at home and takes it as gifts on trips to the Mainland.

Charmed by the circus colors of the bags, she decided she couldn't throw them away. One night she cut up a bag and started weaving. Ten feet and a year later, she came to the end of the warp on her loom. "I guess I'm finished," she said.

Wayman said he intends to hang the tapestry in his cafe on Kalani Street in front of the coffee company. It turns out that he's a longtime patron of the arts. Lion Coffee donates the coffee served at Honolulu Symphony and Diamond Head Theatre fund-raisers. He contributes coffee for the Hawaii International Film Festival.

Wayman told Malm to bring the tapestry to the coffee company when the exhibit is pau and to pick up her check. She said she's going to the Mainland. "You can have an employee's discount on coffee you take along," he said.