Confessions of a Crystal Hoarder Blog

Perhaps you’ve heard about 3d printing…whip up whatever you can dream up (if you have a mastery of the right software)…need a part for that broken gadget? Print one? Need a new ear or kidney? Print one! (I’m not kidding- researchers at the University of Iowa are developing printed kidneys.) Imagine all of the possibilities!

There was a time when plastic held this same sort of mystique. Before it became an ordinary part of daily life, plastics held this same almost sci-fi allure. Much like the current crop of 3d printers, Bakelite wasn’t the first manmade plastic…Parkestine (celluloid) holds that title, but Bakelite was superior to its first gen predecessor. For our purposes the two most important reasons that Bakelite was a huge leap forward is that it doesn’t get Celluloid disease, and is heat stable.

Disease? Yup! Some celluloid pieces exhibit an unusually fast decomposition rate (rot) and if those pieces are stored with healthy pieces the healthy ones start to die as well. Weird.

Now about the heat thing…celluloid explodes. Easily. Try that terrible hot pin test to see if your plastic melts, and you may have a fireball on your hands. We all still encounter the legacy of celluloid’s amazing flammability, although you’ve probably never noticed it. Even in new movie theatres, the auditorium is protected from the projection room by a fire wall. When movies were on celluloid film the heat from projector bulbs caused the film to flame up, sometimes causing fatal fires at the cinema.

So, yeah, Bakelite = way better.

I figured that Bakelite was called that because it was a) light, and b) baked/heat set. Made sense to me. Nah, it was invented Dr. Leo H. Baekeland in New York state in 1907. His plastic was manufactured for two decades under his name. in 1927 the Bakelite patent was acquired by Catalin Corporation. Fun fact: true Bakelite had more fillers than Catalin, so Bakelite pieces tended to be dark and opaque. When Catalin took over, they used less filler and were able to make lighter, brighter and more translucent colors. Catalin is referred to as Bakelite, just like how that box of “kleenex” in your bathroom probably isn’t Kleenex brand.

Hop on over to AGOS Bead University for more fun history.

Suzanne L-O-V-E-S Bakelite. I get the feeling that if those infamous trailers contained just the Bakelite she found in them, and the rest was kudzu, she would have been a happy camper.

In last month’s Bead Hoard Curiousity Club box she shared some of her Bakelite with us. I used my focal for a hinged bracelet that was the crossroads of an inherited collection and the Hoard. But even before I made that bracelet, I was brainstorming about how to use the rounds together.

After many starts and stops this is my wire-wrapped pendent. Other items that I started included a sawed brass frame, a ladder stitched frame, and a leather frame. None of those made it to completion. The ladder stitched frame made it to 99% when I decided that I just wasn’t into it. So into the misfit drawer it went. The final piece is a combo of square and half-round gold-filled wire given to me by my uncle.

These earrings gave me no such heartache, although thedanglers had to wait more than a year in my Hoard stockpile before getting selected. I see a touch of whimsy in these earrings when compared to the intention of my modernist pendent. It’s an odd coincidence that I was watching/listening to a rerun of Top Gear full of pranks and goofiness while I made the pendent, but listening to a murder-mystery audiobook when I made the earrings.

Perhaps that explains these war-time Bakelite brooches I’ve found on eBay. So I hope you are up to your ears in really serious jewe