HAWAII'S SHANGRI-LA

Discover the Glory of Islamic Art in the  Shadow of Diamond Head.

Almost five million visitors come to America's island playground, Honolulu, every year. They come to swim and sun and surf on the beaches of Waikiki, to visit the Arizona Memorial, the royal Iolani Palace and to join the line of climbers to the top of Diamond Head. Yet only a select handful has even heard of the city's most amazing (and unlikely) cultural attraction—Shangri La.

Opened to the public on a limited basis in 2002, the five-acre estate of the late multimillionaire tobacco heiress Doris Duke, holds one of the most extensive and important collections of Islamic art in America.

Visitors are allowed to see the home and collection only on guided tours, which are offered eleven months of the year, four days a week, three times a day. And each tour takes only twelve people. How's that for a select handful? You do the math.

Doris Duke was a woman who could buy anything that struck her fancy, and what this stately blond high-cheek-boned stunner most fancied was Islamic art. Beginning when she was 22, with an eye for beauty rather than religious or historical significance, she traveled the world, shipping back boatloads of Islamic furniture, rugs, wall hangings, tiles, plasterwork, even carved ceilings and hand painted walls. In the late 1930s, to house them, she designed and built her l4,000 sq. foot mansion Shangri La and set it among pavilions and gardens overlooking the sea.

A visit to her home and grounds begins at the Honolulu Museum of Art downtown, the coordinator of Shangri La tours. From there the lucky reservation holders board a van for the 15-minute ride to Duke's palatial home near Kahala, the Bel-Air of Honolulu, where the residents so guard their peace and privacy that only museum vans, no taxis or private cars, are permitted to bring visitors to Shangri La's wrought iron gate.

In Duke's day, the house and lavishly appointed grounds were alive with visitors, especially her great pal Duke Kamanamoko, the Olympic gold medal swimmer who introduced surfing to the world. With the champ and his five brothers, she sailed, surfed, played Hawaiian songs and freely cavorted as she hid out in her own paradise, far from the paparazzi and high society scene which she disliked.

From the moment our guide swings open the simple wood doors of this faintly Moorish low-slung mansion and we walk down into the central courtyard, we are in a dizzying fairyland of mosaics, fountains, tiled walls, carved ceilings pierced lanterns, colored glass and masterpiece carpets. The heiress seemed instinctively to recognize the universality of Islamic art forms, and she had the knack for merging pieces from India, Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, China and Spain into a harmonious whole.

Later, in our walk around the grounds, we passed graceful pillars recalling a Moorish arcade in Andalucia, and the intriguing carved jalis (pierced screens) from India, guarding the privacy of the master bedroom. Below the swimming pool is the playhouse, an exact scaled down replica of the seventeenth century Chihul Sutun royal pavilion in Isfahan, Iran. Farther on we stopped to admire the secluded rectangular reflecting pool with traditional fountains and gardens, which Duke had ordered built after falling in love with the Mughal Shalimar Garden in Lahore, Pakistan.

Though Duke designed and built this house to hold her collection, it was always first a home, where daily life and décor went hand in hand. She entertained her guests on sumptuous hassocks at a low Indian antique table in a dining room whose ceiling was draped in fabric like a Bedouin tent. The elaborate Baccarat crystal chandelier from the l840s that lights this “tent” is a perfect example of the owner's personal style.

Tourists are only allowed to peek from the doorway at two sumptuous sunken Turkish Rooms, with marble fountain, inlaid marble floors, hanging lanterns and antique plates, their paneled walls bearing exquisite patterns from nature. The entire rooms had been shipped from an old Middle Eastern mansion and adapted to this space. As we stood awestruck in the face of such luxury and extravagance, the guide assured us that Duke took it all in stride, often lounging there on silken pillows with her guests after dinner.

Nor did this free spirit worry herself over matching styles and historical periods. The guest powder room, draped and bedizened as for a sultan's harem, sports a shimmering blue sky of the twentieth century Mylar that party balloons are made of.

 

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