Garden flamingo
Garden flamingos , in the United States as flamingos plastic known there are a popular garden decoration. In the southern states in particular, they are at least as common as garden gnomes in Germany. The flamingos are a symbol of kitsch and brought their inventor Donald Featherstone the Ig Nobel Prize for Art in 1996 .
history
Featherstone designed the original flamingos in 1957 for Union Products ( Leominster , Massachusetts ), a garden decoration company. He was inspired by illustrations in National Geographic .
In total, more than 20 million figures were sold. At one point more than 100 people worked in the factory. In recent years, Wal-Mart has been the biggest taker, with these stores alone selling 250,000 copies a year. Union Products stopped producing the flamingos in June 2006 and finally closed its doors on November 1st. It was stated that due to the rising oil prices, the material costs for the flamingos became too high.
The flamingos had - in contrast to their living models, the bird genus the flamingos ( Phoenicopterus ) - a yellow beak with a black tip and were only sold in pairs for about 10 dollars. One of the four-foot-tall birds stood upright, and one tilted its head to the ground as if to eat from the lawn. They stood on a metal leg. Featherstone's signature was found under her tail.
The professor of popular culture at Syracuse University , Robert Thompson summed up the history of flamingos together:
"The pink flamingo started as part of the Florida boom and Florida exoticism, went beyond the symbol of trash culture and is now a combination of everything we know: kitsch, history, simplicity and elegance."
In pop culture
- The movie Pink Flamingos is named after them and made them an icon of trash .
- In the TV series Alf , the garden flamingos of the neighboring couple Ochmonek are alluded to again and again.
- In Germany, garden flamingos achieved notoriety in particular through the computer game The Sims , in which they represent the cheapest garden decoration.
- In the animated film Gnomeo and Juliet, there is a garden flamingo called Featherstone, a reference to its inventor.
Remarks
literature
- Don Featherstone, Tom Herzing: The Original Pink Flamingos: Splendor on the Grass. Schiffer Publishing 1999. ISBN 0-7643-0963-3 (From the inventor of the flamingos).
- Jennifer Price: The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History. The American Scholar, vol. 68, no. 2 (Spring 1999), pp. 73-88.
Web links
- Detailed article at Herald.net
- The nature of a plastic pink flamingo: A Q&A with Jenny Price (English).
- Pseudo-documentary "The Pink Plastic Flamingo: The Ambassador of the American Lawn" (English).
- Nancy Featherstone: Experience: I've worn the same outfit as my husband for 35 years , Guardian May 25, 2013.
- Smithsonian.com: The Tacky History of the Pink Flamingo , September 2012.
- Margalit Fox: Don Featherstone, Inventor of the Pink Flamingo (in Plastic), Dies at 79 , New York Times June 13, 2015.
