Thank you, Don, for all the joy your creation continues to bring. Sadly, on June 23, 2015, Don Featherstone, flamingo father, died. He often wore flamingo clothing and was a verbal and visual promoter of the iconic bird. For example: after something has been discovered or created, no one - anyone, anywhere, ever - can later be the first to have made that discovery or creation.įeatherstone spent 43 years with the company, rising to the position of president before his retirement in 1999. Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded for achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. Featherstone was the winner of a 1996 Ig Noble Prize for Art. Today ornithologists estimate that there are only 200,000 wild flamingos in existence (plus the ones in captivity), and the plastic flamingos have multiplied well into the millions. Plastic flamingos have adapted very successfully to the modern environment. Featherstone told us that his plastic flamingos out-numbered real ones 7 to 1 at that time. He named the first plastic flamingo Diego. It took about two weeks to model both halves of the bird, brought into the third dimension by then-revolutionary injection-mold technology. Always the life of the garden, the pink flamingo stands on its own as the ever classic, yet playful, lawn ornament. Not having a live flamingo model, he used pictures and National Geographic Magazine to sculpt his now famous flamingos. Don told us the plastic duck was anatomically correct (and no, we didn't ask). Featherstone named the duck Charlie then later set him free in Cogshall Park in Fitchburg, MA when the plastic duck was complete. Don convinced a live duck to model for him (no, we don't know how he did that). Facing hunger, he went with the plastics company. He said his choices were: starving artist or plastics company. He was offered a job with Union Products to sculpt three-dimensional versions of the company's most popular two-dimensional products: the duck and the flamingo. The pink flamingo lawn ornament was celebrated as a marker of “anything rebellious, outrageous, or oxymoronic.” This reached its apotheosis in John Waters’s 1972 cult classic Pink Flamingos, in which the (anti-)heroine, who lives in a trailer surrounded by pink flamingos, competes for the title of “filthiest person alive.” The pink flamingo had arrived, becoming the “ubiquitous signpost for crossing various, overlapping boundaries of class, taste, propriety, art, sexuality and nature.Born in September 1957, the icon of the American landscaping, the pink plastic flamingo, is over 60 years old! But where did it come from anyway? Would you believe a very serious sculptor and classical art student who needed a job? Although you might believe the plastic flamingo was a figment of the unemployed mind, quite the opposite is true it was actually a New England plastics company's idea! (stuffy New England? Yes, New England.) And it didn't involve drugs or alcohol! When we met Don Featherstone, flamingo designer, in he told us that after graduating from Worcester Art Museum's art school, he had limited job offers. Then, in the 1960s, there was a revolt against middle class taste, often by the very children of the middle class. No matter that actual flamingos had been hunted to extinction before the 20th century in Florida: as icons, they proclaimed “Florida’s cachet of leisure and extravagance.” The first consumers of the pink flamingo lived in working-class subdivisions, while “middle-class suburbanites gave it a wide berth.” There were diverse sources of appeal: the hot pink, a new and exciting color the plastic, the miracle material the exotica of Florida. ![]() (His first product, the polyethylene “Charlie the Duck,” actually outsold his flamingo for decades.) The pink flamingo was born the next year. Union Products tapped into the post-WWII spread of suburbanization and the wondrous age of petroleum byproducts to make “plastics for the lawn.” In 1956, they hired Featherstone, fresh out of art school. In the 1930s, concrete animals, especially DIY ones, were the rage. ![]() Grottos or swan might be out of the question, but cast aluminum animals, popular in the 1920s, were within reach. The 110 best values anywhere - its the Oriental Trading. Find everything you need to make your event just right with tons of party supplies that will fill your space will charm without making a dent in your wallet. But the appeal of wealthy and middle-class models of nature around the home spread throughout society. Flamingo Plastic Tablecloth Flamingo Fan Food Picks If youre on the prowl for flamingo gear, Oriental Trading has you covered. Not everyone could afford a landscape architect, or a gardener, or even a lawn, for that matter. ![]() One scholar argues this “symbol of artifice is actually nature incarnate.”
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