Stainless steel is a material that’s easy to fall in love with. It is sleek, shiny, strong, doesn’t flake or wear-off and has a nice smooth feel to it. And stainless steel’s beauty is long-lasting, which it owes to its most notable characteristic – it doesn’t rust. Stainless steel has brought such vast changes to industries as automotive, aviation, food, machinery and medicine that it can easily be called the metal of the 21st century.
IBM 1440 with Stainless Steel Front Panel 1963
There has been much noise about the possible disappearance of the honey bee in parts of the United States, and the hoopla is certainly for good reason. The bee, as the saying goes, is busy — being an essential cog in the natural cycle of life’s growth and decay. The honey bee is an industrious multi-tasker whose absence would most certainly be missed. Among their indespensible contributions to the environment is a remarkedly useful byproduct that many take for granted — beeswax.
100% Pure Beeswax
Legend has it that sometime in the 16th century a Portuguese man was charged with witchcraft after showing samples of cloth, which had been made repellent with rubber. When you think about it, rubber really is pretty magical. Rubber seems like a modern product, but indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest have been using it for as long as 3500 years. Caoutchouc, it’s original name, was made into balls, figurines, bottles, fabric-coating and other products.
100% Natural Rubber / Goodyear Advertising 1918
Humans started making glass about 5000 years ago, which makes it one of the oldest manufactured materials in the world. However, major scientific breakthroughs in regards to glass didn’t come until the 19th century. In the 1880s, the German scientist Otto Schott (1851–1935) invented borosilicate glass, a new, much stronger variety of the material. He started selling it in 1893 under the name “Duran.” Schott still sells it under this name today. In the United States, borosilicate glass was first manufactured by Corning Glass Works in 1915, and sold under the name Pyrex.
Borosilicate Glass Beaker
The production of synthetic plastics began in 1907 with the invention of Bakelite by Leo Hendrik Baekeland (1863 – 1944). At the time, there was a thirst for a new material that w0uld fulfill the needs of the latest innovations – radios, electrical insulators and mounts, telephones, car parts, cameras, toasters, vacuum cleaners- any product that required a material that could resist heat, electricity, and be cheaply manufactured through mass production.
Bakelite Camera by Kodak
Indigo-dyed cotton made in West Virginia from 1835 to 1956
Espionage and the Secrets of Craft on the Island of Murano
Five Recipes and All-Around Tricks for Winter Coziness
Natural Cork
Ah, the small squeak of the stopper against glass as you open a bottle of good wine, what could be more pleasing? Perhaps the subtle-spring in your heels as you walk across flooring from recycled wine stoppers? Or the dampened, acoustic softness that seems to seal out the noisy bustle of the world beyond? Yes, cork is a material that does it all, and does it well: it’s natural (derived from an evergreen oak, Quercus suber), beautiful, and regenerates quickly. Best of all, this wonder material is making a comeback.
Book From 1909
READ MORE…