Collecting Plastics is Collecting Design History (original) (raw)
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CnS La Chimica nella Scuola n. 3 2012, 2012
The Plart Foundation, opened in Naples in 2008, is an exhibition and research space entirely dedicated to the world of polymeric materials. Historical and contemporary design, as well as experimentation, training and applied research in the field of restoration with polymeric materials can all be found in this place. In addition to these activities, temporary exhibitions of designers and artists whose common denominator is that they all use synthetic materials to create their particular works also take place at the Foundation. The heart of the Plart Foundation is its permanent exhibition space, which hosts one of the greatest collections of polymeric materials objects: 1500 pieces from the first plastics dating back to the end of the 19th century to contemporary design objects. These synergies form a basis for disseminating knowledge about the vast and surprising world of plastic – generally perceived only as cheap and polluting - among a diverse public, from scholars to school children. In fact, for the Plart Foundation education is a central mission: recently, a multimedia section, where visitors discover plastic world and its evolution, has been opened.
The aim of this paper is to encourage understanding and preservation of twentieth and twenty-first century fashion. It considers the use of plastics by three influential designers of modern and contemporary Western fashion and the challenge of preserving both the plastics and the designers’ intent. Focussing on pieces from The Costume Institute (The Metropolitan Museum, New York) by three influential fashion designers, Elsa Schiaparelli, Beth Levine and Rei Kawakubo, the paper explores the challenges of conserving their work in its design, material and construction. Each designer responded differently to the then newly available plastic polymeric materials used to create their visionary designs. Instrumental analysis, using micro-FTIR, Py-GC/MS and EGA-MS, helped to identify the plastics and to predict longer-term changes. Concerns about ephemerality and temporality are shared by both innovative fashion and conservation. Disconnection between preserving the designs, in the form of museum artefacts, and each designer’s intent, as manifested in the original relationships and processes used to materialise that intent, is examined to understand whether and how ‘designer intent’ can be preserved or represented. The works of Schiaparelli, Levine and Kawakubo provide comparative case studies to explore the challenges of conservation and representation and to inform the development of a theory of ‘fashion conservation’.
The Age of Plastic: Ingenuity and Responsibility, Proceeding of the 2012 MCI Symposium
Smithsonian Contributions to Museum Conservation
The event was conceived as a cross-disciplinary exploration of plastic as technological material, cultural phenomenon, preservation challenge, and force on the environment. Writers, scientists, conservators, historians, filmmakers, designers, and policy makers offer researched and first-hand accounts from life in the Plastic Age. Papers are organized to highlight the importance and complexity of plastic material culture through juxtaposition of countervailing positive and negative viewpoints. The volume features observations on innovation in plastic with past and contemporary examples of furniture design, failed experiments with proteinaceous fibers before World War II, the transition of celluloid from ivory simulant to unique identity, the space program, and bioplastics in automobiles. Studies of the rise of food packaging further explore how plastic shapes and is shaped by our culture. Preservation challenges that new, often unstable plastic poses for the cultural heritage community are explored through case studies of novel conservation treatments, research into new deterioration phenomena, and knowledge transfer. The relationship between plastic and the environment is probed with perspectives on pollution, advantages of plastic to living zoological collections, and recycling. Intended primarily for the cultural heritage community but also relevant to other fields, this volume demonstrates the importance and challenges of documenting the remarkable ongoing evolution of plastic materials that now are integral to the artifact record as markers of achievement and records of the innovation process.
Plastic Days | Materials & Design
Catalogue: Plastic Days |Materials & Design, Silvana Editoriale, Milano ISBN/EAN 9788836630721 Language: ITA/EN , 2015
21 February | 21 Giune Museo Ettore Fico, Tutin, Italy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usgwxWOP12U The exhibition Plastic Days, cured by Cecilia Cecchini and Marco Petroni, arises from the analysis and the selection of about 600 items from Fondazione Plart (www.fondazioneplart.it) collection, and it is made up like an original narration of the big various family of plastic materials. A witness which tells about the transformations occurred in the last 150 years of history and which reveals the innermost nature of modernity and of the mutations that marked the domestic and cultural landscape in which we are immersed. Plastic becomes a magnifying glass focused on the social and economical dynamics of our time. The items on display represent a well-structured selection of quite rare artefacts from all around the world: first production series, mass production items by famous or anonymous designers. This selection is not intended to offer an accurate reconstruction of the history of plastic materials, but to make up an exhibition which can outline a particular reading path of our time, reinterpreted through a multidisciplinary approach between design, art and custom. A wide look, witnessed by contributions in the catalogue by Alba Cappellieri, Laura Cherubini, Stefano Catucci, Gianluigi Ricuperati, Thea van Oosten and Anna Laganà. The exhibition path is completed by interviews with: Andrea Branzi, Donato D’Urbino, Paolo Lomazzi, Alessandro Mendini, Maurizio Montalti/Officina Corpuscoli, Andrea Trimarchi e Simone Farresin/Studio Formafantasma, Gaetano Pesce and Maria Pia Incutti, collector and president of Fondazione Plart.
Surveys of Plastics in Post-1950 Non-published Book Collections
Restaurator. International Journal for the Preservation of Library and Archival Material
Research over the past three decades has demonstrated that certain plastics in cultural materials are inherently unstable, displaying short lifespans and accelerating the degradation of neighbouring collection materials. Knowledge of the conservation of plastics is increasingly common in museum settings. However, less information is available on conserving plastics found in paper-based collections, and even less guidance on the materials and deterioration of plastic components found in book and document bindings. As plastics have been present in popular bookbinding materials since the mid-twentieth century, collection care professions require knowledge and methods for preserving these materials entering book collections. The aim of this paper is to determine strategies for the care of post-1950s books containing plastic. Collection surveys were conducted to determine the materials, structures, and degradation patterns of non-published books found in archive and archive-like settings...
The Art of (Up)Recycling: How Plastic Debris Has Become a Matter of Art?
Advances in environmental and engineering research, 2021
Since 1907, when Bakelite was invented, there has been a dramatic rise in the daily usage of plastic-like materials. Today, its negative impacts are a part of scientific studies and public debates. Art and artists play a significant role in these discussions. They mediate between the specialist content and public awareness. This study is dedicated to the artworks of artists using plastic waste collected from the seashore. I organized their works into three lines, within which artists have different threads of plastic interference in the natural environment. The artists examine: 1. The future of a planet dominated by plastic products, like Bonita Ely's work from the Plasticus Progressus series that predict post-human existence. 2. The conceptual metaphors of contemporary culture, presented in Bounty, Pilfered by Pam Longobardi. It is an installation constructed from fishing debris. 3. The "nature-cultural" forms, i.e., organic constructions created by human interference and modified by nature, like Crochet Coral Reefs. The cooperation of volunteers with Margaret and Christine Wertheim produced this artwork. The artistic intervention creates new cultural and natural forms. This kind of artistic attitude towards waste is a formal and aesthetic innovation of various materials used in artistic practices. It also makes a significant commentary about the future of Earth. In a discussion about art producing unnecessary objects, recycling artistic material seems more ethical than using non-renewable materials obtained from natural sources.
Conservar Património, 2020
The plastic objects from our cultural heritage are material testimonies of our history, technology and industry. Still, in Portugal, there is no museum of plastics, and the collections are spread through private collectors and industries. The research project, 'The Triumph of Bakelite - Contributions to a History of Plastics in Portugal', aims at creating this museum. To this end, the research work gave rise to the exhibition, 'Plasticity - A History of Plastics in Portugal', in Museu de Leiria in 2019. This study focuses on the contribution of conservation science for the writing of this history and preparation of ca. 150 historical plastic objects for display. Bakelite, melamine, polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene and plasticized polyvinyl chloride are just a few examples of the polymers identified by infrared spectroscopy. This identification was crucial to tell the history of the plastics industry in Portugal. Both the spectra and characteristic absorption ...