Formica Forever

Book excerpt: Formica Forever, published to celebrate Formica®s centennial, takes us on a lively, informative walk through the life of this much-loved material: from its beginnings as electrical insulation; to its adoption by designers including Donald Deskey in the 1930s; to a golden age ushered in by the postWorld War II housing boom; through global expansion in the second half of the twentieth century; to the laminates inventive uses by designers, artists and architects such as Jasper Morrison, Daniel Buren, Frank Gehry, Laurinda Spear and Zaha Hadid; to the present, which finds the Formica Group working with young designers to push the limits of this pioneering material. Formica Forever brings together an exuberant array of archival illustrations of original product samples, advertisements and other ephemera. These are anchored by essays by Phil Patton on the history of Formica Corporation; by Alexandra Lange on Formica Materials and the design world; and by Peter York on the wipe-clean world made possible by Formica laminates. Also included are an illustrated chronology and 100 Years of Color and Pattern, a 128-page Formica-by-colour sequence punctuated by excerpts from literary works by such luminaries as John Updike, Janet Evanovich and Jhumpa Lahiri that refer to Formica materials.