As the renowned Merrie Monarch Festival returns to Hilo for a 62nd year, the Merrie Monarch Hawaiian Arts and Crafts Fair will once again be offering anyone who didn’t score tickets a free way to partake in the week of cultural significance — and even take a piece home.
The craft fair will host over 150 artisans and merchants at the Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium and neighboring Butler Buildings, both inside and surrounding the structures outdoors, Wednesday through Saturday.
The fair, which is once again free of charge, will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesday through Friday and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday.
“It’s the community that puts this whole thing on, and that’s the one time you see Hilo kind of come alive during the week,” said craft fair co-chair Kegan Miura. “There’s just so much rich history in their work as well. It’s great to see a lot of families that continue on for generations, continue to work. I think that’s what makes us the happiest, and knowing that … it’s not lost and it’s continued down as there’s a legacy behind it.”
Miura and co-chair Taylor Escalona have been heralding the fair and showcasing artisans from throughout Hawaii and beyond for the past four years. After facing years of substantial challenges regarding the fair’s safety and accessibility immediately following the 2020 pandemic, the co-chairs feel like the waters have calmed.
“We knew that there was the need for it, and we just wanted to do it a safe way,” Miura said, acknowledging the fair’s cultural importance to the festival and its fiscal significance for the vendors, who Miura said can easily make $100,000 during the four-day fair. “It was, at that time, very difficult to balance it all out. But we gladly made it through, and we can return back to normal.”
The return to normalcy also has been accompanied by advancements in recent years that make the fair even more enjoyable for buyers and sellers, including Wi-Fi to benefit cellphone service and vendor transactions, an on-site ATMs and postal service station for gifts needing to be mailed, and the Hawaiian Airlines shuttle, which will offer free transportation on Thursday and Friday between the Hilo International Airport and the craft fair for anyone with a Hawaiian Airlines boarding pass.
“It brings people just flying in for the day to go shopping,” Escalona said about the shuttle. “The great thing about the craft fair is that not everybody can attend the festival because the tickets are hard to get, so (they can get) the taste of what it is and can spend all day there, just walking through and seeing all the vendors, the entertainment and all the food. It’s great.”
Escalona and Miura said this year’s entertainment outside the craft fair will include a multitude of up-and-coming musical artists and halau from several schools that will offer free hula performances available for anyone who can’t get into the ticketed event. They added that the variegated food truck offerings will fulfill any cravings with a range that includes tacos, Hawaiian food and Filipino cuisine.
Tens of thousands of people attend the fair every year to see the wide array of Hawaiian-made crafts being offered, with some of the biggest draws being clothing, jewelry, instruments and woodwork, the co-chairs said. An added delight is seeing the crafts being made live at the booths when customers stop to talk story with vendors.
“We do have demonstrators during the week as well, but our vendors are demonstrators as well. They’re there doing kalo weaving in their booths or working on their work. … I know some of the woodworkers start with stumps and then you’d see the finished product that they come up with. You get a real deep appreciation for their work, and you can see the time that they put into it and truly it’s a craft that they they mastered and they they really take a lot of pride in,” Miura said. “They’ll take you through … how they do it, why they do it, and you can really feel their passion for what they do.”
One returning vendor Escalona and Miura spoke glowingly about was Ricardo San Nicolas, who has been selling his intricate featherwork at the fair since 2000. Known to many as Kumu Rick, he said the Merrie Monarch craft fair is one of the only places he sells his work in person.
“You cannot tell stories of Hawaii or Hawaiian history without Hawaiian featherwork. That’s how important it is,” said the 26-year veteran of the craft fair. “Hawaiian featherwork always was present in our history. It represents our ali‘i, and the ali‘i are our stories.”
San Nicolas said he always brings a wide selection of lei hulu (feather lei) and lei papale (feathered hat bands), which each take 30 hours or more to make out of hundreds of individual or bundled natural-colored pheasant feathers that he says are humanely sourced from Asia. Intricately crafted shoulder capes also will be available at the fair, he said.
San Nicolas said he also brings a new feather cloak (‘ahi ‘ula) with accompanying feather helmet (mahi‘ole) to feature each year, which are exact replicas of the garb historically worn exclusively by Hawaiian royalty. The craftsman said tens of thousands of individual feathers and over 1,500 hours go into the construction of the floor-length, sweeping capes.
San Nicolas’ work is so historically accurate that he was brought onto several movies and documentaries showing ancient Hawaiian history and traditions, including a documentary on the Pu‘ukohola Heiau Historical Park and the short film “Kukini,” which has been shown at several film festivals since its release in 2024.
San Nicolas also was the featherwork consultant for the forthcoming Apple TV+ miniseries “Chief of War” starring Jason Mamoa, which will premier this year on Aug. 1.
With San Nicolas’ work on display in such institutions as the Kauai Museum, the Australian Museum in Sydney and the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu — as well as in hotels like Four Seasons Hualalai — the opportunity this week to own one of his intricate pieces becomes even more valuable.
“This craft fair is an important event where (we find) all of what is considered the best of the best of Hawaiian artists that Hawaii has to offer,” San Nicolas said. “If you’re shopping for your wildest dreams, the Merrie Monarch craft fair is where you will certainly find it.”
Email Kyveli Diener at kdiener@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
