Shortly after moving to Rome in 1969, my wife Helen and I visited the statue of Moses by Michelangelo at San Pietro in Vicoli. Moses sits quietly, gazing to the right, upon the tomb of Julius II. Michelangelo portrayed him as a muscular middle aged man with a long beard, flowing robes and horns.

But why horns? I could not imagine this great artist thinking of Moses as a devil. Researching this, I learned the mistake had occurred from a miss-transliteration from the ancient Aramaic...of lightning flashing around the head of Moses...being mistranslated as horns as he descended from the mountain carrying the tablets with the ten commandments.

I thought of Moses as being infuriated as he descended from the mountain bearing the sacred tablets with the ten commandments only to find a crowd gathered at the foot of the mountain worshipping and dancing around an idol of the golden calf.

Years later, the opportunity to create my own version of Moses became possible through my sponsorship of Seihosai Meikei, in my opinion, the greatest sculptor of Japanese netsuke of all time. (Japanese netsuke are miniature carvings, usually created in wood or ivory). Meikei and I worked together drawing and posing for photographs which helped tremendously in conveying my thoughts, concepts, and ideas to Meikei. We met together frequently, either in Japan or Hawaii. The Moses project took three years and the end result was electrifying!

The figure of Moses is 25 inches tall, carved of meticulously chosen takata ivory. Each of the dancing or praying figures are approximately 3 inches tall, the golden calf is 3.5 inches high.

The mountain was sculpted by Chuck & Mark Watson, two local Hawaiian artists of renown. The material chosen for the mountain is of extremely dense Hawaiian basalt rock, created in two sections with a turn-table inlaid into the base, allowing Moses to be viewed from all angles.

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