The Dodge Hula Girl Lamp tiki mug is a piece of functional tiki art inspired by the original Dodge Hula Girl table lamps of the 1940s—sculptural, playful, and full of presence.
Those original lamps are admired for their graceful posture, expressive character, and warm sculptural quality. We’ve been drawn to this form for years and knew early on that translating it into a tiki mug would require patience and restraint rather than a quick adaptation.
This piece has been in development for a long time. Over the course of several years, we worked through multiple sculpt iterations, mold tests, and glaze experiments, refining the form again and again. Some approaches were abandoned entirely; others brought us closer to what the piece needed to be. What you see here is the result of that long process—a considered reinterpretation shaped by persistence, revision, and care.
Each Dodge Hula Girl Lamp tiki mug is produced in-house at Laguna Studio, our ceramic studio in Laguna Beach, California. The work is carried out by our team, led by ChanTiki, using artist-made molds and traditional slipcasting techniques, followed by extensive hand-finishing. Every mug is cast, cleaned, fired, glazed, and refined by hand. While the form begins in a mold, the finishing is where each piece becomes its own. Variations in glaze and surface are a natural part of the process and ensure that no two are exactly alike.
This piece is produced as a Laguna Studio run, made in limited quantities. Due to the labor involved, only a small number can be completed at a time, and we may limit or pause orders depending on how many are outstanding. We don’t currently have plans to revisit this form once production concludes, and any future versions—if they happen—would likely differ in finish or execution.
These mugs are made to order, but not a pre-order. Production is already underway, with the first batches currently in progress. Finished pieces ship weekly, as they come out of the kiln from their final firing, and orders are fulfilled in the order they are received.
The Dodge Hula Girl Lamp tiki mug is a labor of love—created at Laguna Studio to honor a vintage form we’ve admired for years, translated thoughtfully into functional tiki art.
