Читать книгу The Industrial Condition of Women and Girls in Honolulu: A Social Study - Frances Blascoer - Страница 8

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A tour of the local curio and art shops discloses many choice articles typically Hawaiian in their manufacture or character. There are to be found everywhere quantities of tapas, lauhala mats, calabashes and leis, but in so heterogeneous a mass and so mixed with other things that their appeal is apt to miscarry. Tourists find it difficult to select mementos to carry away with them, and so much valuable patronage is lost.

There are infinite possibilities in an establishment of this kind if managed by a person of good judgment and artistic taste. A careful assemblage of the above articles, groups of the really artistic photographs of native types to be found in some of the shops, framed in the beautiful koa or kou woods; together with other wares which might be easily evolved, would make an attractive showing. Home-made candy specialties and other delicacies characteristic of the islands—creamed cocoanuts; pineapple candies; home-made guava jelly; mango jam; chutney—all are in demand. A tea room, with a young woman to check packages for shoppers, has also been suggested by a number of people. A poi luncheon (which is nowhere available at present) on steamer days would be a novelty.

An article in the Sunday Advertiser called attention to the fact that no fruit shop in Honolulu made a specialty of Hawaiian fruits; and suggested that lauhala baskets filled with choice mangoes, Hawaiian oranges, bananas, strawberry guavas, mountain apples, figs and papaias wrapped in ti leaves, would be acceptable gifts to departing friends. Any plan of this kind, however, would depend on the extermination of the Mediterranean fruit-fly whose depredations have caused an embargo to be laid on all fruits and vegetables from the Island of Oahu.

Hawaiian shop attendants, with Chinese and Japanese girls serving tea, would be added attractions.

These features should furnish material for advertisements to be placed on steamers and in the literature of the promotion committee.

It would be difficult to give the regulation store building the distinctively Hawaiian atmosphere which ought to go far toward making a success of such an enterprise: and an attractive cottage with a certain amount of ground space would furnish a most appropriate setting.