Thought this might be an interesting little writeup to scribble out, the idea for it came to me while I was out for a walk on the town, as I’m sure a lot of ideas come to a lot of writers…anyway.

These days, almost everything is made from plastic. Not necessarily the same plastic, but a plastic nonetheless. Spoons, forks, knives, sporks, splaydes, dildos, lunchboxes, chopsticks, the vacuum-packed and frustratingly tightly-sealed plastic wrapping that some of your purchases come in, expressly packaged thus to “lock in freshness” and so forth.

With so much plastic all over the place, from the stuff our food is packaged in to the stuff that we squeeze our toothpaste out of…and onto!…What were things made of back in the old days? Don’t forget that plastic is a very new material. The first plastics such as shellac, bakelite and celluloid were only developed in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Before then, everyday items had to be made out of something else. But what?

This article will look at some of the most commonly-used materials for the manufacture of everyday items prior to the invention of plastics in the late 19th century. Those who might be animal-rights campaigners…look away now.

Ivory

Ivory. A mythical material, purported to be white in colouration and smooth in texture, unseen by mortal eyes since at least the start of the 21st century. Historians are only now beginning to piece together what items early man used this wonder-material to create. Research is slow owing to a lack of funding, but we hope to get more information soon.

Yes indeed. Ivory. Almost unheard of in modern society, as little as fifty or a hundred years ago, ivory, taken from the tusks or teeth of hippos, walruses and most famously of all…elephants…was used in the manufacture of almost anything you could lay your hands on.

Apart from being purely decorative, ivory was used for hundreds of years in a variety of applications. The keys of early pianos were laid in ivory…

…billiard and pool-balls were made out of ivory…

…the scales of straight-razors were made of ivory…

Ivory-scaled straight-razor made by the famous Rodgers family of English cutlers

…as were the handles of fine silverware…

…the use of ivory in everyday items wasn’t just confined to the West, however. The Chinese used ivory to make chopsticks…

Chopsticks made of ivory and pure 24kt gold; Qing Dynasty, China

…and to make the tiles or blocks for the most famous Chinese game of all…mahjong…

Ivory had been used for all these applications and more throughout the centuries. Apart from the applications already listed, ivory was also used for decorative ornaments, musical-instrument mouthpieces, the handles of walking-sticks, the shafts of dip-pens, letter-openers, page-turners and a myriad of other applications.

Ivory has been used for centuries, hundreds of centuries, for almost anything you could imagine. But people enjoyed ivory at a price. The majority of ivory was taken from the tusks of elephants and thousands of elephants were slaughtered and hunted purely for their tusks. Although there were other sources of ivory, the elephant was the most common one and it was hunted to such an extent for its tusks that in the 1970s and the 1980s, a worldwide ban was placed on buying, selling or trading any ivory that came from an elephant that did not die a natural death. The hunting of elephants was declared illegal, as is the trade of poached elephant-tusks. Although it is not illegal to own either new or antique ivory and even though it is not illegal to buy and make things out of ivory, its rarity in the modern world, coupled with the prices which come along with it, to say nothing of the legal red-tape that ties it all together, means that luxury or even everyday items made out of ivory have long become a thing of the past. You can still get ivory today, but prices skyrocket and even a few small pieces of mammoth ivory (the tusks of extinct mammoths were also taken for ivory) shoot into the thousands of dollars and pounds sterling.

To understand why ivory was used for so very many things, you have to understand what ivory was. Ivory was more or less elephant-tooth. And as you know, teeth are very strong. It was this strength, combined with the pure whiteness of ivory (that hadn’t been exposed to sunlight) that made it a favoured material for making stuff with. The other reason why ivory was popular was the pure feel of it.

Very few people these days have ever SEEN ivory, and by that, I mean seen it in the flesh, and even fewer people have had the privilege of touching it, due to its incredible rarity. I was fortunate enough that my former piano-teacher had this grand, honking old upright piano in her living-room. It was a massive, German beast made by the German piano-manufacturers of Richard Lipp & Sohn, in about 1910. Despite everything, despite all the moves, the relocations, the pushings, the shiftings, the tunings and the loosenings and retightenings and being banged around in delivery trucks for what was then the better part of a hundred years, my piano-teacher’s piano had nonetheless retained every single one of its original eighty-eight ivory-laid keys. If the ivory fell off, she said she simply got some glue and stuck it back on again. Under no circumstances was she ever going to replace it with…*gasp*…PLASTIC!

It was a real treat to play that piano and to feel the cool, slightly grainy smoothness of the keys. The mix of slick, ice-cold smooth ivory and the slightly grainy feel that it also had, when you rubbed your fingers over it. It’s a touch, a feel and a sensation that only a lucky few have ever had pass over or under their fingers. But those who have will never forget it.

I know I never will.

Animal Hair

These days, the bristles on brushes are made of plastics or plant-fibres of some kind. In decades and centuries past, however, a completely different material was used to make the bristles on brushes.

Toothbrushes

You may never brush your teeth again after this, but the bristles of many early toothbrushes were actually made of pig-hair! Pig-hair was stiff and robust and from the mid 1700s until the 1940s, the majority of toothbrushes were made from pig-bristles! The modern toothbrush was invented by William Addis. In the 1700s, Addis was jailed for inciting a crowd to riot. While in prison, Addis was convinced that oral hygeine could be improved. Instead of rubbing salt and soot onto your teeth (Oh look at that black, crusted sheen!) with a rag (eeww!), Addis was sure that he could create a ‘tooth-brush’ to clean his mouth with. His prototype was made from a small animal-bone with holes drilled in it, a tufts of pig-bristles glued into the holes. This invention remtained the standard for oral hygeine for over 200 years.

Shaving-brushes

Many of our grandfathers, some of our fathers and a few of us modern men still shave the old-fashioned way, with a straight-razor or a safety-razor, traditional shaving-soap and a shaving-brush, to whirl up the lather and massage and rub it gently into our faces before commencing a dance of death with a merciless mistress of cold steel. Traditionally, the bristles of shaving-brushes were made from boar-hair or badger-hair. This is one aspect that hasn’t changed…even today, the best shaving-brushes are still made from badger-hair. The one in my bathroom has badger-hair bristles. They were…and are…prized as a brush-making material because of their ability to retain water. Plastic bristles let the water slide off their smooth surfaces, but badger-hair bristles held water much more effectively, which is why shaving-brushes were, and still are made from badger-hair.

Lead

As this period advertisement shows, lead was a delicious, nutritious and essential foodstuff back in the old days. It was essential to wellbeing, good health and pure, safe drinking-water. A lot of the stuff made today was once made with this dense, amazingly tough, but also incredibly poisonous metal. Drainpipes, waterpipes and other life-essential, water-carrying necessities were all made of lead. These days, most pipes are made from strong plastics which are easy to manufacture, easy to replace and significantly cleaner and healthier.

But apart from pipes, lead was also used to make little Jimmy Hamilton’s playthings! For hundreds of years, lead was used to cast children’s toys! Most famously, entire model armies of tiny, cute, intricately-cast soldiers…all made of lead. Apart from being amazingly effective as musket-ammunition a-la Mel Gibson in “The Patriot”, lead had a number of other properties. Lead poisoning was a terrible condition. It caused adbominal pains, headaches, siezures and in extreme cases, it can even be fatal.

Ebonite

Ebonite is sometimes confused with plastic. It isn’t. Ebonite is actually vulcanised, hardened rubber and the discovery of how this material was produced was made in the mid 19th century. Prior to the invention of the first plastics such as bakelite, celluloid, lucite, shellac and casein, ebonite was what most cast or moulded products were made of, that could not be made out of metal. Such products included the earliest fountain pens (from the 1880s until the 1920s), the mouthpieces of various musical instruments, smoking-pipes and an insulating material for early electrical appliances such as the first phonographs, radio-sets and even as cases for the first automobile-batteries!

The two black fountain pens in this photograph date from 1914 (top) and 1900 (bottom). Both of them are made from ebonite

Although fairly versatile, ebonite did not last. By the 1920s, it was rapidly replaced by what so many things these days are made of. Plastic. Ebonite’s Achilles’ Heel was that it was extremely brittle. It didn’t take much to destroy it and it was the quest to find something better that plastics were invented and the age of plastic domination began…