Spirit of Aloha | Articles | Here's Hawai'i | May/June 2003

Here's Hawai'i

Precious Porcelain

The Hawaiian porcelain sculptures of nonagenarian Julene Halvary Mechler have been compared to the most celebrated European porcelains

Collectors know her simply as Julene, the artist behind the porcelain sculptures of Hawaiian figures for which there are bidding wars on the Internet. Her children know her as a gentle woman who never raised her voice, and who poured her love of Hawai'i into 50 years of sculpting ceramic and porcelain figurines. When I met Julene Halvary Mechler, she was 90 years old (she's now 91), sitting regally in her Kane'ohe home at the head of an extraordinary dining table that she and her husband made in 1957. The table, one of only two in existence, has a border of Philippine mahogany and a surface of ceramic tiles that she had stenciled and hand-painted, tile by tile, with life-size images of monstera leaves.

Beyond the windows were a profusion of palms, gingers, croton, banyan, ti plants-a jungle you'd like to get lost in-and across the living room, behind Julene, hung a large oil painting of Diamond Head from its pre-resort days. "From the time she arrived in Hawai'i in 1940, she and my dad would always sit at the beach and enjoy the view," explained her son, landscape architect Steve Mechler. "She'd come home and paint, go back to the beach, come home and paint, and eventually did the whole painting from memory."

Throughout the living room stood ceramic lamps that Julene had painted with anthuriums, hula dancers and Ming-style bonsai, and from the cabinet shone the radiant, lifelike faces of her ceramic and porcelain figures. They were stunning, with every blossom, hand, fold of fabric, brooch, ruffle, feather and detail impeccably researched and executed. Their facial expressions-alive, spirited and engaging-and the dignity of their carriage glowed with an uncanny reality. Made in limited editions and triple-fired, composed of detailed handiwork and multiple pieces, each made from a different mold, they are worth hundreds of times their original price, up to thousands of dollars apiece-if you can find them.

From the 1940s on, Julene made about 180 figures a year, in subjects that were always Hawaiian: lei sellers, tapa makers, hula dancers, a pa'u rider and a series on the Hawaiian monarchy. Queen Lili'uokalani is detailed so intricately that you can see the shape of her knee beneath her skirt, and the folds of the pa'u rider are as fluid and touchable as some of the finest marble sculptures in the Galleria Borghese. Julenes have been compared to Lladro and the most celebrated European porcelains, and many collectors point to her as one of the foremost porcelain artists in the world.

But the artist herself is modest and soft-spoken, her posture erect at 91, her beauty luminous with a quiet grace. "I've loved making them, and whether they would have sold well or not, I would have done them," she reflected. "I always wanted to go on to the next one. I enjoyed every minute of it, and I enjoyed working with him, too."

She was referring to her husband, Harold Mechler, who built her sinks, work tables, three kilns, the monstera table, and the formulations for the molds and glazes until his death in 1989. When she arrived on the Lurline in 1940 to marry him, she miraculously found a gardenia lei to wear at her wedding, even though the flower was out of season. From that day on, while raising three children and tending to a burgeoning business, their partnership defined their lives.

"From the very beginning, I felt like I was part of Hawai'i," Julene said with a wide smile. "I love the work and the joy that it has brought me."

Under the Hula Moon Archives