SACRED WAVES

Our free-flowing waves out of Hawaiian woods are a ceiling mounted mobile with or without light source. RayBella were fascinated by the ancient culture of the Hawaii islands where, before the arrival of European colonizers, surfing was deeply part of the culture and regarded as a kind of religion. Thanks to the abundance of food available in the blooming Hawaii, the natives used to spend most of their pastime gliding over the ocean doing he’enalu, the Hawaiian word for surfing.

 

Hawaiian people looked at the ocean like a god. Along the shore there were kind of temples, named heiau, for surfing too. This structure made of stone were used to invoke the waves through prayers and chants, but also to observe surfers compete since they were games and festivals too.

 

The practice of surfing foresaw many rituals starting from the construction of the boards: making a surfboard was very much a ritualized process. Hawaiians people were making offers to the soul of the tree to be cut down, the choice of wood fell on the most precious, as Koa tree from which the master craftsmen produced surfboards