Plastic (37 page)

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Celluloid toothbrushes replaced
: Susan Mossman, ed.,
Early Plastics: Perspectives, 1850–1950
London: Leicester University Press), 118.

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billiards became an everyman's game
: Author interview with Julie Robinson Robard, coauthor of
Celluloid: Collector's Reference and Value Guide,
in April 2010.

21
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In 1914, Irene Castle
: Glenn D. Kittler,
More Than Meets the Eye: The Foster Grant Story
(New York: Coronet Books, 1972), 1–2.

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A single machine equipped
: Meikle,
American Plastic,
29.

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DuPont ... released photos
: Ibid.

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With the rise of mass-production plastics
: Jen Cruse,
The Comb: Its History and Development London
: Robert Hale, 2007). She writes: "The advent of injection-moulding machines, combined with the changing fashions in the early 1930s, killed off the idea of combs as decorative objects and the arts and skills of comb-making largely died out in Western countries" (page 54).

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Combs were now stripped down
: While celluloid eliminated the need for tortoiseshell to make combs, the tradition of making combs that look like tortoiseshell persists. Indeed, today tortoiseshell is just a part of the plastic palette; like the bright primary colors of Legos, tortoiseshell is a virtual guarantee that an object is plastic.

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it took fifteen thousand beetles
: Fenichell,
Plastic,
87.

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it had a powerful identity of its own
: Friedel, e-mail correspondence with author, May 2010.

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"
stripped down as a Hemingway sentence
": Fenichell,
Plastic,
97.

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"
From the time that a man brushes his teeth
":
Time,
September 22, 1924, quoted in Fenichell,
Plastic,
97–98.

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a shift in the development of new plastics
: Friedel,
Pioneer Plastic,
108.

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When the first nylon stockings were introduced
: Fenichell,
Plastic,
147–49.

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thermoplastics quickly eclipsed
:Donald Rosato, Marlene Rosato, and Dominick Rosato,
Concise Encyclopedia of Plastics
(Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 56; American Chemistry Council, "The Resin Review: 2008 Edition." The distinction is not always absolute; some polymers, such as polyethylene, can be formulated as either a thermoplastic or a thermoset. In addition, there are other, much smaller categories of polymers, including epoxies, silicone, and engineering plastics, polymers designed to meet high-performance demands.

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"
Let us try to imagine
": V. E. Yarsley and E. G. Couzens,
Plastics
Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1941), 154–58.

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Eager to conserve precious rubber
: Author interview with Luther Hanson, curator of the U.S. Army Quartermaster Museum, April 2010.

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Production of plastics leaped during the war
: Meikle,
American Plastic,
125. The role of Teflon in the atomic bomb comes from John Emsley,
Molecules at an Exhibition: The Science of Everyday Life
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 133.

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DuPont had a whole division
: Mary Madison, "In a Plastic World,"
New York Times,
August 22, 1943.

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first National Plastics Exposition
: "Host of New Uses in Plastics Shown,"
New York Times,
April 23, 1946.

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"
Nothing can stop plastics
": Ibid.

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Plastics production expanded explosively
:Meikle,
American Plastic,
2. In the two decades following World War II, plastics grew at double-digit rates, faster than any major competing materials. Rosato et al.,
Markets,
2.

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sell consumers on the virtue
: One of the benefits often promoted by the industry was the ease with which plastics could be cleaned: all it took was the swipe of a damp cloth. A former editor of
Modern Plastics
recalled, "We used to write stories for many years—blah, blah, blah, and you can wipe it clean with a damp cloth—all the stories ended like that." Quoted in Meikle,
American Plastic,
173.

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Hotels ... began handing out complimentary combs
: Cruse,
The Comb,
195–96.

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we had an ever-growing ability to synthesize
: Meikle,
American Plastic,
2.

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"
You will have a greater chance to be yourself
": Quoted in Thomas Hine,
Populuxe
(New York: Knopf, 1986), 4.

2. A Throne for the Common Man

28
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"
Plastic as Plastic
": The exhibit was also good public relations for the chemical company underwriting its costs, Hooker Chemical Company, which was later found responsible for polluting Love Canal. Meikle,
American Plastic,
1.

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"
the answer to an artist's dream
": Hilton Kramer, "'Plastic as Plastic': Divided Loyalties, Paradoxical Ambitions,"
New York Times,
December 1, 1968.

29
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Herman Miller company reportedly spent
: Author interview with Peter Fiell, furniture historian, April 2008.

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"
chairs are extremely important
": Author interview with Paola Antonelli, curator, Department of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art, September 2008.

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The oldest known chair
: Florence de Dampierre,
Chairs: A History
(New York: Abrams Books, 2006), 17.

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The Shaker craftsmen
: Paul Rocheleau and June Sprigg,
Shaker Built: The Form and Function of Shaker Architecture
(New York: Monacelli Press, 1994), quoted in Paola Antonelli, "A Chair for the Common Man," unpublished manuscript.

4
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The Thonet Model 14
: Alice Rawsthorn, "No. 14: The Chair That Has Seated Millions,"
International Herald Tribune,
November 7, 2008.

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"
Every truly original idea
": George Nelson,
Chairs
(New York: Whitney Publications, 1953), 9, quoted in Charlotte Fiell and Peter Fiell,
1000 Chairs
(Cologne, Ger.: Taschen, 2000), 7.

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The Greek root of the word
: Meikle,
American Plastic,
71.

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As the French philosopher Roland Barthes
: Roland Barthes,
Mythologies,
translated by Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 97.

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The makers of Bakelite
:Meikle,
American Plastic,
1.

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called Plastikoptimismus
: Quoted in ibid., 320.

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Bakelite spoke "in the vernacular
": Quoted in ibid., 108.

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Karim Rashid
: Rashid in e-mail interview with author, March 2008.

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The Museum of Modern Art in 1956
: Alison J. Clarke,
Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999), 36. In a 1947 article, the magazine
House Beautiful
called it "fine art for 39 cents." Ibid., 42.

33
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pseudo-wood cabinets
: The furniture industry's use of fake wood was so common by the late 1960s that the Federal Trade Commission warned the industry to stop using confusing and potentially actionable brand names such as Wonderwood and Miraclewood. "The only non-plastic furniture around ten years from now will be antiques," the merchandising director of Ward Furniture Company in Fort Smith, Arkansas, told
Modern Plastics
in 1968 in the article "The New Excitement in Furniture,"
Modern Plastics
(January 1968): 89, 91.

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Plastics' adaptability and glibness
: Walter McQuade, "Encasement Lies in Wait for All of Us,"
Architectural Forum
127 (November 1967): 92, quoted in Meikle,
American Plastic,
254.

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people's unfortunate experiences with plastics
: Meikle,
American Plastic,
165–67.

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The designer Charles Eames
: Quoted in Fenichell,
Plastic,
259. Even the plywood with which the Eameses often worked was a product of polymer technology; that sandwiching of wood layers hadn't been possible until plastics came along to laminate the veneers.

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he quit college to join the Danish resistance
: Panton's early years and career are discussed in a series of essays in Alexander von Vegesack and Mathias Remmele, eds.,
Verner Panton: The Collected Works
Weil am Rhein, Ger.: Vitra Design Museum, 2000). The essay by Mathias Remmele "All of a Piece: The Story of the Panton Chair" offers one of the few accounts of how Panton came to make his iconic chair.

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He dressed only in blue
: Author interview with Rolf Fehlbaum, CEO of Vitra, September 2008.

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"
should now use these materials
": Panton, quoted in von Vegesack and Remmele,
Verner Panton,
23.

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"
we have not bothered about anything
": Poul Henningsen, quoted in ibid., 71.

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At a design fair in 1959
: Ibid., 28.

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"
It is at most a sculpture
": The comment was reportedly made by George Nelson, design director of Herman Miller. See Remmele, "All of a Piece," in ibid., 78.

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Panton didn't invent that form
: Fiell and Fiell,
1000 Chairs;
author interview with Alexander von Vegesack, director of Vitra Design Museum, May 2008.

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his vision brought the form into the synthetic age
: Actually Panton executed a version of the'S chair in molded plywood, but it didn't achieve the energetic feel or flow of the chair made in plastic. Nor could it be mass-produced. Von Vegesack and Remmele,
Verner Panton,
76–77.

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Mid-twentieth-century designers
:The effort started in 1946 in Canada, when a pair of designers created a prototype fiberglass chair. Two years later, the Eameses began making their famed bucket seats of fiberglass. But neither of these was all of a single material or amenable to easy mass production. Fiberglass cannot be injection molded. Instead, the plastic-resin-and-fibers mixture that makes up fiberglass is poured into a mold and then sets; for years, that was a mostly nonmechanized, labor-intensive process.

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Saarinen wanted seat and pedestal
: Quoted in Fenichell,
Plastic,
259.

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He told colleagues
: Quoted in Meikle,
American Plastic,
204. Others working to develop plastic chairs were similarly stymied. In 1962, British designer Robin Day devised a chair with a body made of inexpensive polypropylene. Working with the Shell Corporation (which held the patent on the plastic), he was able to master the molding technology to produce the seat in a single piece. But the metal legs still had to be attached separately. Nonetheless, the Polyprop was a stunning success, becoming the classic institutional plastic chair still found in classrooms and waiting rooms around the world. Some fifteen million have been sold to date, and in 2008 the British government issued a stamp celebrating the chair (as part of a series honoring the best of British design). A few years after the Polyprop, the German architects Helmut and Alfred Batzner designed a chair made of a fiberglass-like material that could be molded in a single piece, but again it wasn't readily mass-produced, and the legs were made separately. Author interview with Peter Fiell, and Fiell and Fiell,
1000 Chairs.

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the Italian company Kartell
: Indeed, the Italians in general led the way in the development of plastic furniture, thanks in part to close cooperation among Italian big business, small workshops, and progressive designers, according to Karl Mang
, History of Modern Furniture
(New York: Harry Abrams, 1978), 160.

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The Castellis recognized
:Catalog of Kartell Museo.

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"
the odor of the refinery
": Meikle,
American Plastic,
226.

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even Kartell had trouble
: Author interview with Peter Fiell.

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The company's owner wasn't wild
: Author interview with Rolf Fehlbaum.

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The chair proved more challenging
: Panton, Fehlbaum, and Vitra engineer Manfred Dieboldt wanted to find a plastic that could be machine-molded and that wouldn't require extensive hand-finishing afterward. In the first stab at making the chair, the company used a type of polyester reinforced with fiberglass, which required a lot of costly, time-consuming manual labor. The few prototypes they made were an instant sensation in the design press, but Panton was unhappy with the weight of the chair, the uneven finish, and the high price. See von Vegesack and Remmele,
Verner Panton,
85.

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In 1968, they found the perfect plastic
: Though Panton had broken through the polymer ceiling in chair manufacture, he wasn't entirely satisfied with the Baydur chair, which came out of the mold still looking and feeling rough. It had to be spackled, sanded, and painted, which drove up the price. Panton wanted to make the chair affordable. Two years later, he and his partners came upon a new plastic they thought would work even better: a polystyrene called Luran'S, made by BASF, which came in dyed granules and needed no additional processing once out of the mold. They began making the chair from Luran'S. But after several years, it became apparent the material was less hardy than initially thought. Consumers complained that their chairs cracked, and even broke. Those complaints, coupled with changing tastes, led to a significant decline in sales; in 1979 the company stopped making the chair. Panton once again had to go in search of a manufacturer who believed in the beauty and value of the design. Eventually, Vitra, the successor to the company that had first produced the chair, picked it up again, and since 1990 it has been making and selling the chair. Information from von Vegesack and Remmele,
Verner Panton,
84–86, and author interviews with Fehlbaum and von Vegesack and with Manfred Dieboldt, former engineer for Vitra, December 2009.