Wednesday, August 18, 2021

Plastic copies of metal copies of...

Sometimes basketry, carved wood, pottery or glass items came to be made in metal for a while. Then plastic copied that. In the U.S./Europe, that happend with drinking cups, dishes, baskets themselves (those bypassed metal, generally), wheelbarrows (some are still metal, but only decorative wheelbarrows are wooden), and different kinds of chairs.

In India, there are plastic chairs that are suggestive of carved ivory.
plastic chair in India


American-designed chairs, originally wooden, some made in steel and aluminum, before plastics came along:

plastic Adirondack chairs on a porch in New Mexico
Written in 2015 and saved at Following Trails:
In India, they make plastic versions of the clay water pots they made for a long time. Before plastic, they were metal.



Where I live (and I don't know whether it's all of my ancestry's neighborhoods, too), we have plastic buckets that are like the metal buckets we had before that were the same shape as the wooden buckets that were made way before my time. I have seen wooden buckets in England and in the northeastern U.S., but not in New Mexico. Wood dries out and shrinks, in the desert. The metal bands will just fall off of an old bucket or barrel here, if it's not full of something. People use half-barrels as planters. In my front yard, now that I think of it, I have two half barrels made of plastic!

We also have plastic jugs, like for milk and for maple syrup, that are like things that were made of glass before, that were like things made of pottery before that.

https://thinkingsticks.blogspot.com/2008/10/hand-pumps-siphons-water-containers.html


This topic has sat unfinished for a while. I'll post it and bring photos back to it as I come to them.

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Fly Tipping

This blog never was appreciated by anyone but me, but still, I will keep it, because some posts are quoted in Just Add Light and Stir, or on my site.

There are 22 unfinished posts, which might never be finished. Maybe I should release them as they are, and work on them later (or accept comments and ideas on the partial versions).

This was on my facebook page, and has lots of comments there. Everyday knowledge will bring total blankness in other places (and times).




July 26,2013, I wrote:
Brits, do not tell. This is a mystery for north Americans. Don't anybody tell yet. Let people have a day or two to wonder, and ponder, and giggle and google.
There are many comments, and some talk of cow-tipping, brollies, bum bags and such, at that link.