Someone told me that plastic turns yellow, and that it ages badly … Do not worry. This adage is false.
There is a prodigious plastic.
The beauty of plastic is not ephemeral. On the contrary. But I am not talking here about a particular matter: the PMMA, better known as Plexiglas. Its discovery dates from 1930, which is not so old as this. This “Plexiglass” is the breadth of Design’n Chic, and its properties are the source of the diversity of its offer.
This wonderful acrylic crystal, known by its name as PMMA, (Poly Methacrylate methacrylate) is transparent and light, more than the glass that it replaces in many applications. This plastic material is noble and very expensive. But it is recycled to infinity. It is re-modelable to wishes, within certain limits well known to those skilled-person in this art.
This plastic material is in fact a prodigious Crystal, which does not keep up, and does not turn yellow. And even, like a good wine, this plastic is improving, in the course of the evolutions of science and especially of the knowledge of Chemistry: the material becomes hard and resistant to shocks, scratchproof for some, antireflective for others … They are printed, colored … Evolutions seem limitless.
A little history
What a journey since the first films! It’s only a century of history. The first plastic material based on synthetic polymer is the Bakelite in 1907. But the history of plastics dates back to ancient Egypt: in the 15th century ante J-C, the Egyptians used glues based on gelatin, casein or albumin.
Plastics can be made from many raw materials provided they contain carbon. After the First World War, the chemical industry favored the fossil carbon of coal, natural gas and especially petroleum.
These raw materials serve as relays to produce the basic molecules of plastics: ethylene, propylene, butadiene, benzene, ethanol, acetone …
A Shared Passion
It is this brilliant acrylic crystal that has fascinated my father, and that inspires today all my creations, thanks to excellent properties very virtuous elasticity. It is therefore a plastic material of dream, that one models “almost” as one wants. Yet it is necessary to know it, to know how to work it, and to use it.
“Someone told me that plastic material was one of his passion … and I think it seduced me too.”
About the plastic material, by Isabelle d’Esquermoise.
Dedicated to my Father.