Tables & Curio Cabinet
Koa wood
Late 1800's
Bishop Museum's art collection contains approximately 250 oil paintings and over 4,000 works of art on paper. These collections were displayed in rotation in the Picture Gallery, along with the Museum's ethnographic collection, when the gallery first opened to visitors in 1891 through its closure in 1936. With visual aids such as albumen photographs of the original exhibit, the Museum restored and reopened the Picture Gallery in 2007, attempting to recapture the feeling of the 19th-century space. To enhance this experience, period furniture from the Museum's collection, like the wood and glass rail cases used in the original Picture Gallery, were included in the exhibit design.
A curio cabinet—a wardrobe to hold rare, odd, and collectable items—was common in the 19th-century home. The inclusion of the walnut wardrobe with a carved royal coat of arms made by Alfred Geffrey in 1884, allows the museum to continue the tradition of displaying artwork alongside items in the ethnographic collection.
The sitting areas in the Picture Gallery reflect local design history. The large wooden benches were the original seats located in the center of Hawaiian Hall. The koa clef settee was made by Henry Weeks, Jr., of Hilo, Hawaiʻi. Settees of this scroll-back style were designed to replicate musical notations and were especially popular in Hawai'i in the 1890s through the turn of the century.
The two tables in the room also reflect the style of furniture favored in Hawaiʻi in the late 1800s. The octagonal koa inlay table was reportedly crafted by William Menzel, a German cabinetmaker working in Honolulu in the 1890s. This design was his most popular, gracing many homes in Hawaiʻi. It is said that the second koa table was originally in the Emma Street home of our founder, Charles Reed Bishop, who then gifted the table to the Museum.