![]() ![]() Central Flag & Gift on Leominster’s sleepy Main Street stocks them, along with other pink flamingo knick-knacks. They took Don’s career to places he never imagined.”įeatherstones are still produced locally by the Cado Company in the neighbouring city of Fitchburg, which bought the moulds after Union Products folded in 2006. Nobody expected they would be anything special or have such a great commercial life, but they kept on selling. “I think his first design was a duck,” Abrahams said. She has several pairs of Featherstones, as the authentic flamingos are fondly known, at her Pennsylvania home. “I was aware of the John Waters film, but that wasn’t why I liked them,” said Massachusetts native Beth Lennon, author of the Retro Roadmap travel guides and collector of pop-culture Americana. Plastic flamingo movie#Some dubiously credit this to John Waters’ absurd 1972 movie Pink Flamingos, which questioned ideas of taste and celebrity. Somehow, though, the plastic pink flamingos survived and landed on the kitsch-cool list. He had a wonderful sense of humour,” she recalled fondly.īy the mid-1960s, the environmental back-to-nature movement more-or-less declared the very word ‘plastic’ an adjective for fake, and the American Dream was exposed as an empty ideal based in consumerism. At one point,” she added, “there were some places that banned plastic pink flamingos. “They were at first considered tacky,” said Nancy Featherstone, Don’s wife, “but Donald always said the flamingo isn’t tacky, it’s what people do with them that can be tacky. Not everyone admired Featherstone’s flamingos, though. His attitude was to just go along with it,” Abrahams said. As for the criticism and unexpected fame the flamingos brought Featherstone? “He was a very talented painter, but he disguised that. “He was always clear that he never intended them to look lifelike,” said Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research magazine, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Real flamingos feed in mud, not on grass though. Their elegant necks ended with a gently curved head and noble hooked beak.įittingly, as real flamingos are highly sociable animals, Featherstone’s birds were created and sold in pairs: one arched down, as if feeding, and the other standing tall, at watch. His birds had long slender (metal) legs anchoring them into the ground – legs so thin they barely seemed able to support the froufrou bright-pink body billowing out at their top. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.Featherstone had never seen a real flamingo, so he based his design on photographs he found in a National Geographic magazine. Window.FB.Event.subscribe('xfbml.render', function() (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')) It has become a symbol for showing a sense of humor, crossing boundaries, and for those daring to be different. ![]() It represents an influential part of popular culture. The pink flamingo has different meanings to different people. ![]() They also kayaked with them through the wilderness.Īround the 1990s, the plastic pink version became popular as housewarming gifts. Baby boomers could be seen carrying pink flamingos across Europe in their backpacks. In 1972, a director called John Waters released the movie entitled “Pink Flamingos.” It became infamous for its outrageousness featuring a drag queen and carrying the tagline “An exercise in poor taste.” By 1980, avant-garde galleries seized on the concept and started to display flamingo-themed installations. It was considered at one time a symbol of bad taste. The meaning of the pink flamingo has changed somewhat over the years. He died at 79, only a few hours before Pink Flamingo Day. He named the first pink flamingo Diego, and his design won him the Ig Nobel Prize for Art in 1996. He was a sculptor fresh out of art school hired by the company to create 3D plastic lawn and garden ornaments. The pink flamingo was designed in 1957 by Don Featherstone from photos in “National Geographic.” It was one of the first projects he worked on at Union Products in Leominster, Massachusetts. ![]() They are a staple icon in pop culture and are popular among working-class homeowners. Why celebrate the occasion, you might ask? Well, it’s a fun way to appreciate the pink flamingos used as garden decor. Pink Flamingo Day is observed annually in the United States on June 23. ![]()
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