BLAKE, TOM

Hawaiian Surfboard. Honolulu: Paradise of the Pacific Press, [1935]. First edition. Publisher's boards covered with brown tapa-cloth, lettered in blue-black. 9 x 6 inches (22.5 x 15 cm); 95 pp.; with 32 plates from photographs. Inobtrusive wear to the fragile boards, tiny split to the foot of the joint; internally a clean copy, pp. 77-8 with a mostly marginal crease, tiny stain to foot of gutter margin.

This is the first detailed practical work on surfing and is quite rare. The only earlier work known to us, Gurrey's remarkable 1914 "The Surf Riders of Hawaii," is primarily illustrative (a mixture of photographs and poetry), not practical. Tom Blake, who was Milwaukee-born, is noted on the title here as the Hawaiian Surfboard Paddling Champion of 1930, and National Distance Swimming Champion of 1922. A real innovator in the sport, Blake worked with the legendary swimmer and surfer Duke Kahanamoku, "The Big Kahuna," who he had met at age 18. The book includes chapters on ancient Hawaiian legends of surfriding, early Hawaiian surfing history, modern surfriding, and how to use the then-new hollow (cigar-box) surfboards, which facilitated riding the face of the wave. Blake was a leading advocate of these. The book appeared both in blue boards and, far more desirably and appropriately, in a pleasing Hawaiian paper-cloth. The present example is in the latter binding, which is likely the first issue. "The most important publication in the surfing canon."—Timothy DeLaVega, 200 Years of Surfing Literature.