Plastic flamingo
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| Artist | Don Featherstone |
|---|---|
| Year | 1957 |
| Type | Sculpture |
| Location | Everywhere |
Pink plastic flamingos are one of the most famous of lawn ornaments in the United States, along with garden gnomes and other such ornamentation.
The pink flamingo was designed in 1957 by Don Featherstone while working for Union Products, and has become an icon of pop culture,[1] and won him the Ig Nobel Prize for Art in 1996. It has even spawned a lawn greeting industry where flocks of pink flamingos are installed on a victim's lawn in the dark of night. After the release of John Waters's 1972 movie Pink Flamingos, [2] plastic flamingos came to be the stereotypical example of lawn kitsch.[1]
Many imitation products have found their way onto front lawns and store shelves since then; those "official" pink flamingos made by Union Products from 1987 (the 30th anniversary of the plastic flamingo) onward can be identified by the signature of Don Featherstone located on the rear underside of the flamingo. These official flamingos were sold in pairs, with one standing upright and the other with its head low to the ground, "feeding". Union Products, of Leominster, Massachusetts, stopped production of pink flamingos on November 1, 2006. However, HMC International LLC, a subsidiary of Faster-Form Corporation, purchased the copyright and plastic molds of Featherstone's original plastic flamingos in 2007, and will be resuming production of them in Westmoreland, New York.[3]
[edit] References
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Plastic flamingos |
- ^ a b Collins, Clayton (2006). "Backstory: Extinction of an American icon?". Christian Science Monitor. http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1102/p20s01-lihc.html. Retrieved on 2008-04-23. Published: November 2, 2006
- ^ "Is the pink flamingo an endangered species?". MSNBC. 2006. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15515764/. Retrieved on 2008-04-23. Published: November 1, 2006. From the Associated Press
- ^ "Retro pink flamingos to hatch in New York". MSNBC. 2007. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18967357/. Retrieved on 2008-04-23. Published: May 31, 2007. From the Associated Press, on the purchase and re-production of Don Featherstone's original plastic-flamingo design.
- Pescovitz, David (2006). "Pink flamingos, RIP". BoingBoing. http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/19/pink_flamingos_rip.html. Retrieved on 2008-04-23. Published: October 19, 2006.
- Price, Jenny (2006). "In the Pink No More". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/opinion/17price.html. Retrieved on 2008-04-23. Published November 17, 2006 - Reflects on the shutdown of the original plastic-flamingo factory and the flamingo's impact on popular culture.
- Featherstone, Don; Herzing, Tom (1999). The Original Pink Flamingos: Splendor on the Grass. Schiffer Publishing. ISBN 978-0764309632. http://www.amazon.com/Original-Pink-Flamingos-Splendor-Grass/dp/0764309633.
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