1907
Design
1907 Although “plastics” were invented long before 1800, it was not untill 1907, with the invention of Bakelite, to become a common good. The first plastic, based on a synthetic polymer made from phenol and formaldehyde, the first viable and cheap synthesis methods invented by the Belgian-born New York living Leo Hendrik Baekeland. Bakelite was the first purely synthetic “plastic” material not derived from living matter and therefor available for cheap mass production. Who would have ever thought this invention would have led to the disastrous situation we live in today? During the Liberty stile, right at the start of the Jugendstil & Art Nouveau period this new material made its entry … or was it the other way around? Did plastic make these new colourful and fluent designs possible? Was it the introduction of this new material to trigger the immagination for these amazing designs untill the incredible late 1930/40 designs of the Art Deco? My design wants to go back to this period to re-discover plastics as they were once meant to be. A gift of freedom to designers because of the colourful, translucid flexible qualities of plastics. A perfect material to freely express luxurous elegance rather then being a disposable waste. I used a standard but translucid ECOPIXEL material to obtain both colour ànd translucidness for the cap and a non translucid 031 ECOPIXEL for its foot that I believe should look like stone.