history of plastics

Hello all, A recent donation to our collection has sparked interest and amusement among the MoDiP team as we have very limited information on its production and every research attempt, thus far, has led to a dead end. Researching the origins and history of objects in our collection is one of my...

At the end of June, I attended a fascinating conference held at the University of Portsmouth. PlasticsFuture 2023 was convened over three days and brought together speakers from across the world to present their research around, and experiences of, plastics pollution. The team behind the conference...

Once again flicking through the trade journals in our collection and recognising an object that we own has enriched our record with a wealth of information. This time I was looking through an edition of British Plastics from February 1955 and I stumbled across a fabulous article about the...

On a recent trip to the Museum of Design in Plastics, I was reminded of my first visit to LEGO headquarters in Billund, Denmark. I have been lucky enough to work with LEGO over the past eight years, producing games for their new LEGO sets. My first project was updating the mobile game LEGO City for...

The Merle Norman cosmetics box bag features in the current MoDiP Reuse exhibition as part of the Another Life case, which looks at other uses for packaging in which some products are offered for sale. AIBDC : 009526 Image credit: MoDiP The Merle Norman brand of cosmetics is not familiar in the UK...

In 1995 Dyson launched the Recyclone, the first vacuum cleaner to be made entirely of recycled plastics (refer image below). The DC02 Recyclone Image credit: https://www.dyson.co.uk/james-dyson/invention-a-life/07 Initially the cleaners were made from waste materials of the DC01 and DC02...

In the late 1950s, furniture manufacturer Hille approached Robin Day with the idea of producing a one-piece chair shell to add to their range. Up to that point, there were a limited number of materials that could achieve such a design, such as pressed metal, structural ply or glass-reinforced...

As a museum curator of a small museum, I find that my work each week can be varied and extremely interesting. This last week has been full of working out budgets for the coming year, thinking about new acquisitions, updating object records, and thinking about our next exhibition. I have also been...

AIBDC : 008605 Image credit: MoDiP This bright and sunny, yellow coloured frisbee is in an amazing condition given that it is over 70 years old. That is largely due to the fact that it has been unused: 1600 of these Arcuate Vanes were discovered in a warehouse in 1977, where this example is believed...

Given that it is Nordic Day tomorrow, Thursday 23rd March 2023, I thought it would be apt for this blog to celebrate a lovely piece of Danish design from the MoDiP collections. AIBDC : 008850 and 008849 Image credit: https://www.modip.ac.uk/collections?columbo%5B0%5D=person%3A14306 The Margrethe...

Short answer: no, certainly not in my house! And certainly not in MoDiP either as we have some great objects linked to this tasty desert which I would like to share with you here. Image credit: Katherine Pell First up is this child’s toy in the shape of a football (refer image above). What does that...

We recently acquired this lovely pair of celluloid heels (refer image below). Image credit: Katherine Pell They consist of a wooden heel that has been covered by a thin layer of black coloured cellulose nitrate (celluloid), which has then been decorated with paste stones and metal granulation...