Cultural History In Focus | “Royal Hawaiian Featherwork (Na Hulu Ali’i)” by Christina Hellmich from Tribal Art Magazine

Feather cape | ʻAhu ʻula © Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum — Feather cape | *ʻAhu ʻula*
© Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum

Royal Hawaiian Featherwork
Na Hulu Ali’i

by Christina Hellmich

This article was generously provided by Tribal Art Magazine.
Special thank you to Christina Hellmich and Alex Arthur.

Feather cape of Honorable Levi Haʻalelea | ʻAhu ʻula © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich — Feather cape of Honorable Levi Haʻalelea | *ʻAhu ʻula*
© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

Feathered Helmet | Mahiole © The British Museum — Feathered Helmet | *Mahiole*
© The British Museum

Feather cape | ʻAhu ʻula © Pitt Rivers Museum — Feather cape | *ʻAhu ʻula*
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Feather cape | ʻAhu ʻula © Metropolitan Museum of Art — Feather cape | *ʻAhu ʻula*
© Metropolitan Museum of Art

Feather cloak | ʻAhu ʻula © Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum — Feather cloak | ʻAhu ʻula
© Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum

Feather Lei | Lei Hulu © Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum — Feather Lei | *Lei Hulu*
© Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum

Royal Staff of Feathers | Kāhili © Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum — Royal Staff of Feathers | *Kāhili*
© Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum

Feather cape | ʻAhu ʻula © Hawaii State Art Museum — Feather cape | *ʻAhu ʻula*
© Hawaii State Art Museum

Feathered Helmet | Mahiole © Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum — Feathered Helmet | *Mahiole*
© Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum

Feather cape | ʻAhu ʻula © Australian Museum — Feather cape | *ʻAhu ʻula*
© Australian Museum

Govenor Boki of Oahu and his Wife Liliha, pastel drawing based on earlier work by John Hayter, c. 1860 © Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum — Govenor Boki of Oahu and his Wife Liliha, pastel drawing based on earlier work by John Hayter, c. 1860
© Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum

Queen Kapiolani wearing her coronation gown with a feather cape draped on her throne. Charcoal artwork by J. Ewing, on a photograph reproduced by J. J. Williams. © Hawaii State Archives

Ooro, One of the Principal Officers of Kamehameha II. © Honolulu Museum of Art — Ooro, One of the Principal Officers of Kamehameha II.
© Honolulu Museum of Art

Christina Hellmich

Christina Hellmich joined the staff of the newly re-opened de Young Museum in 2005 and has worked as Curator in Charge of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas since 2011. Her area of expertise is Oceanic visual culture.

In her curatorial role, Hellmich organizes and collaborates on exhibitions, publications, and public programs. She served as co-editor and contributed to the exhibition catalogue accompanying Royal Hawaiian Featherwork: Nā Hulu Ali‘i, winner of the Textile Society of America’s 2015 R. L. Shep Award and the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association Ka Palapala Po‘okela award for Illustration/Photography and co-authored Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey with Line Clausen Pedersen.

Publications include New Guinea Highlands: Art in the Jolika Collection co-edited with John Friede and Terence Hays and winner of honorable mention in the American Association of Museums Publication Design Competition (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2017). A recent essay, “Carving the Story: Recovering Histories of Sepik Art in the Jolika Collection” is included in Le Journal de la Société des Océanistes, (2018). Other essays include: “Cosmopolitan relationships in the crossroads of the Pacific Ocean,” in a 2015 Bloomsbury publication, Writing Material Culture History, edited by Giorgio Riello and Anne Gerritsen and “A tino aitu figure below the surface” in Nukuoro: Sculptures from Micronesia, edited by Christian Kaufmann, Oliver Wick, Nigel Stephenson, and Nora Scott, published in 2013. Hellmich’s dissertation focuses on indigenous visualities at the Midwinter International Exposition in San Francisco in 1894.

Disclaimer: Art of the Ancestors is a strictly non-commercial educational platform and has no vested interest or business relationship with Tribal Art Magazine. We do not take any responsibility for the content they publish; their opinions are their own.

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Cultural History In Focus | “Royal Hawaiian Featherwork (Na Hulu Ali’i)” by Christina Hellmich from Tribal Art Magazine

Royal Hawaiian FeatherworkNa Hulu Ali’i

by Christina Hellmich

Christina Hellmich

Art of the Ancestors

Royal Hawaiian Featherwork
Na Hulu Ali’i