Plastic Breaks Out of Its Mold : Furniture Designers Like Its Pliable, Creative Properties

No longer afraid to be just itself, plastic is showing up in new places of prominence in the home: in the middle of the living room, in stairwells, in bathroom sinks.

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Its foot has been in the door for a long time--in light switches, moldings, dishes, frames, storage crates and a thousands other nooks and crannies--but it’s usually been appreciated more for its function and affordability than its beauty.

Its reputation for cheapness has made it both popular and unpopular, but not all plastics are cheap--plexiglass is often more costly than traditional glass and acrylic more costly than most woods.

And though perhaps polyester pantsuits of the ‘60s have come to define low-end style, polyester fabric is used today by high-end fashion designers such as Giorgio Armani and Thierry Mugler.

The property of plastic that has kept it in the marketplace in an age of reverence for natural fibers and building materials is its pliability. It can be molded, sculpted and rolled into just about anything--which has made it a creative medium for furniture designers.

Plastic furniture can be as expensive as a one-of-kind $10,000 acrylic dining room table or as inexpensive as the $10 white patio chair manufactured in five minutes.

Some of these cheaper pieces of furniture solve problems of decorating on a small budget. Colorful plastic chairs, stackable bookshelves, storage bins and cubes are especially good for family rooms and children’s bedrooms. Most of these pieces last fairly long, although they are subject to cracking and some discoloration.

(If that happens, plastic furniture can be spray-painted with acrylic paint. First it needs to be cleaned and treated for static, which is accomplished by washing it with a 10% detergent-in-water solution.)

But as cheerful as painted plastic furniture is, it’s in the more expensive acrylic furniture that the medium comes into creative, crystalline use.

Mandel & Company in Design Center South in Laguna Niguel is one of the few places in Orange County where high-quality acrylic furniture can be seen.

The company has been carrying several different lines of the furniture for 15 years. “It’s a nice light look,” said owner Elaine Mandel. “Now that houses are getting smaller, the clearness of the furniture makes the rooms look larger and, if there is a view, the furniture doesn’t detract from it.”

Acrylic furniture is as clear as crystal and sparkles almost as much when light hits it. Colored acrylic isn’t available because of the difficulty in getting evenly tinted pieces thick enough for furniture.

Like glass, acrylic can scratch. Most scratches can be removed with buffing compounds, unless they are deep gouges.

“The biggest no-no with acrylic is cleaning with ammonia. It can cloud the surface and even over a period of time seep in and glaze the material,” Mandel said. Special cleaners are available that should be used instead.

Acrylic items at Mandel’s store include a $3,000 rocking chair, a $6,000 coffee table and a $400 ice bucket.

“There is cheaper acrylic furniture than what we show here,” Mandel said, “but it isn’t as thick as the kinds we show and doesn’t have the same brilliance.”

In addition to the expense of the raw material, the labor involved in assembling the furniture accounts for its cost. Each piece is designed and formed separately and the joints individually glued.

Acrylic furniture is one of the more innovative uses of plastic in design since the 1960s, when many Los Angeles-area artists began using plastics to create high-gloss sculptures.

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Plastics, which are produced in myriad ways, are made from synthetic resins.

The resins are made primarily from petroleum, but some can be made from coal, natural gas, cotton and wood. Chemical manufacturers produce the resins and sell them to companies that in turn make them into products.

The first version of plastic (cellulose nitrate or celluloid) was discovered by Alexander Parkes in 1862 in Britain. Today this plastic precursor is used for Ping-Pong balls but little else because of its flammability.

Cellulose acetate followed in 1894. It is non-flammable and used for cutlery handles, telephones and pen barrels. In 1897 came casein, which was used to make buttons. The first totally synthetic resin was 1907’s formaldehyde. From that product came the melamime formaldehyde used in decorative laminates such as Formica.

Today’s plastics are made of giant synthetic molecules (macromolecules) whose atoms are linked in chains up to 10,000 times the length of those found in non-synthetic molecules, according to Thelma R. Newman in the book “Plastics as Design Form.” Micro-organisms cannot degrade these man-made materials as easily as they can other organic matter having shorter molecular chains.

Not so long ago, people thought of plastic as a throw-away material. Increasing awareness of problems created by throwing away material that does not easily biodegrade is changing that attitude. Plastics are resistant to heat, cold, corrosion and decomposition--qualities that make them durable, not disposable.

Today, more thought is going into how plastic is made and used in the home and into recycling it when it’s no longer needed.

Like the oak chest of drawers tucked away in Grandma’s attic for 100 years, today’s quality plastic furniture may ultimately be recycled into the heirloom collectibles of the future.