Thursday, September 1, 2016

BAKELITE - GET IT RIGHT

I have become increasingly miffed at what is up on the Internet being sold as Bakelite. Recently, it has come to a head.
Well not that one, but you know what I mean.

A while back I saw someone selling all kinds of plastic, none of which was real Bakelite and saying it was. I wrote to them and explained what Bakelite is and how it's made and why their products cannot be Bakelite. They wrote back to me telling me that they've heard that before and that NO ONE knows what they are talking about!!

Shame on me.  Myself and all the experts who wrote all those books I have on Bakelite as well as all the sites on the Internet that define it clearly, and NO ONE knows what they are talking about.
Just this one  person. 
Alone in the big wide world.

Well, here's the scoop:

What?  Hey, it's vintage and the handle is Bakelite!
..........................OK, I'll behave........(not).

Bakelite is cast, like iron is cast.  When it's manufactured it looks like this:
or this:
or this:
Then it is carved, either by hand (most-sought-after) or by machine.
It's easy to tell hand-carving because the carvings are not an exact match.  Example in mind, these earrings in my shop:
Look closely and see that they are meant to be a matched set but the carvings are not exactly the same.
Also, a lot of the time the carved-out section is a bit more "matte" and not as shiny as the rest of the piece.

IT....CANNOT....BE....MOLDED!!!!!!!!!

...like most plastics.  I wish I could hire one of those blimps to advertise that to the world.

When unsure, a good thing to look for is mold marks, like on this piece.  See the line going through the center?   That's a mold mark and that means it's NOT Bakelite:


It's not Celluloid.  Celluloid looks like this:
and this:
....and it CAN be molded
THIS is often thought to be Bakelite, but it's celluloid:

THIS is NOT Bakelite:
Here's an insert from a very popular piece of vintage jewelry that is being sold everywhere on the Internet (it must have been very common in its day).
It's being offered as Bakelite but it is MOLDED.  Plus this piece is actually warped, so there's another reason why it can't be Bakelite.
Bakelite must be tested for authenticity.  There are a LOT of sites on the Internet to help you with this, however, I do not recommend the "hot water/smell" test.  Everyone seems to have a different idea of what the smell should be like.  
Buyers of Bakelite: Don't be fooled!  Learn as much as you can about it and soon you will be able to tell if its really Bakelite just by looking at the photo!
Here's some Bakelite in all it's glory:
Tell me we've got that straight so I can sleep at night.

~~~~~~~Shameless Self-Promotion~~~~~~~
I have some vintage Bakelite pieces in my shop but I used to design and create jewelry from broken vintage, and I had a serious Bakelite phase back in the early 2000's.Many of the one-of-a-kind leftover samples are being offered in my shop at shopThrilling.com, at slightly above original wholesale prices. https://shopthrilling.com/collections/lunajunctionvintage











Saturday, February 13, 2016

We Are Baby Boomers

…and as usual, we have something to say (per the Monkees).
 
This is not so much about vintage clothing (I did throw a little in).  This is about my generation.
 
There were many different kinds of us back then: 
“Rah-Rah’s” known later as “Preppies”, aka: “Jocks”
“Hippies”
“Greasers” (we called them “Nicky Newarks”)
“Dorks” 

WE ARE SO LUCKY.  

We had the Beatles in every incarnation WITH John and George




The Moody Blues, the Animals, the Zombies (a great group that had no clue their name would be a household word in the 2000’s)

They did not look very "Zombie-like"

 The Grateful Dead

The Rolling Stones with Mick Jagger

No…..THIS Mick Jagger

                                                          *sigh* wasn’t he adorable?

We had real Psychedelia. Yes, that’s a word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelia

We had Timothy Leary, Bob Dylan, Haight-Ashbury, The Mamas and the Papas and THIS:


Think what you want about this generation, but we were about AWARENESS.  One example in mind:  Special parking for the Handicapped.  AWARENESS of the handicapped. THAT was us.

  
We got to wear stuff like this:

…and this:
 (oh yes, and we had Jimmie)

(...and Janis too)

…and this:

Whoa.  Flashback.



There was never a generation quite like ours.  There are still young people out there who imitate what we had, try to re-live those times.

(Ha.  Eat your heart out.)

Yes, there were drugs.  A lot of us were doing them because we thought we would learn something important about ourselves, transcend the times, the people.  Be better, somehow. 
It didn’t work, but we were too young and idealistic to admit it. And we kept on truckin’:

…and then there were those who did drugs just to get high….


Nowadays?  Allow me to use the vernacular we used back then:

We are freaking out.

Grandchildren are the biggest mind-blowers.
  
Far out?  Yes, but TOO far out.

Age spots?  No way, Man. That's hellacious.

White hair?  Hallucinating. Just cool it.

Arthritis?  WHAT??!!  You’re trippin’.

Social Security?  Not enough bread, Man.

We fall-out before 10PM  (hedacious!)

Where are we supposed groove? The old folks home?

That's outrageous, Man.

My Old Man is really my old man?!

Not cool.

We forgot your name because of all the pot we smoked back then, not because of our ages.

Right?

We never for a minute thought about the 60s coming back, except they did, only in a different way…

…as in our ages.

Hey, do NOT be surprised if some of us freely drop an "F-Bomb" every now and then....   

Hey, I’ve said this before:  We are NOT and never will be your mothers “old folks next door”.  We will continue to blow your mind no matter what our ages are.

So there you have it.  We are now TWICE the age of those we said never to trust…
me 1971


PS:  my apologies to internationals who read this and cannot get through all the American slang used here….