Furniture from Fiji comes to Hawai'i
By Paula Rath
Advertiser Staff Writer
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| "Easy Chair and Foot Roll": A bold stand-alone piece that perfectly suits the Island lifestyle. Top-grain leather, featured on all Pure Pacific Hawaii furniture, gives this piece a buttery- soft texture. Available in black, tan, natural and burgundy.
Photo courtesy of Pure Pacific Hawaii 27th Annual Home & Garden Show 5i10 p.m. today 5-10 p.m. tomorrow 10 a.m.i9:30 p.m. Saturday 10 a.m.i5 p.m. Sunday Neal S. Blaisdell Center Exhibition Hall $4 adults; $3 seniors and military with ID; $3 children ages 7 to 12; free for children younger than 7 |
The "accident," as it turns out, was actually an illness. The Davises' then 18-month-old son, Drew, got a serious ear infection, and the doctor in Fiji told the Davises he might lose his hearing if he flew home. So they stayed an extra week in Fiji. "Ah, shucks," dad Steve said with a grin. "An extra week in Fiji and voila!" he said as he gestured to a warehouse full of furniture in his just-opened 'Aiea business, Pure Pacific Hawaii.
While killing time, the young couple fell in love with the furniture in the Fiji hotels and asked a taxi driver to help them find the manufacturer. He took them to the door of Pacific Green, an Australian firm specializing in furniture designed in Australia and hand-crafted in Fiji. They ordered a living-room suite that "suits our home just perfectly. Then all of our friends were interested in getting furniture like ours, and it turned into a fascinating niche market," Davis said.
The wood is unusual, even by Pacific standards: It's 100 percent coconut palm wood from Fijian plantations, recycled from palm trees planted more than 100 years ago for commercial use. Today, the trees have outlived their usefulness and have been cut down for lumber. The land is being used for diversified agriculture.
The leather comes from Australia, New Zealand and Italy. The craftsmanship is adapted from ancient Fijian canoe-tying techniques. Artisans wrap steel ties with leather or magi-magi (coconut strands made into rope) for lashings or bindings on tables and chairs.
Each collection of Pure Pacific Hawaii furniture is named after a different South Pacific island or island nation. The Hawaii Collection has vertical slats with a slightly Asian influence. The Papua New Guinea Collection is leather with canvas backs in a style that's a nod to the 1950s. The Loma collection is butter-yellow leather with a squared-off contemporary silhouette, while the Samoa collection has sturdy cylindrical legs with thick lashings.
Davis has no scientific evidence yet, but he says palm wood appears to be termite-proof, perhaps because the sand the trees grow in makes the wood unattractive to the pests. He hopes that research will bear this out.
Pure Pacific Hawaii will take orders for custom furniture in any of its styles. While all the wood is palm wood, leathers can be mixed and matched to suit an interior. Prices vary according to availability of materials.
Looks like Steve won't be using that degree in agriculture after all — at least not in the immediate future.
