If you've ever wandered through a vintage shop or a flea market, you might've stumbled upon a shiny, colorful piece of ...

When Leo Hendrik Baekeland invented Bakelite in 1907, he changed the world — ushering in the Age of Plastics and transforming the way people lived. The phenolic resin took off first as a superior, ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I cover upmarket jewelry, timepieces & ethical, sustainable jewelry. One-of-a-kind repurposed Bakelite bangles by Mark Davis are ...

IT IS a busy evening in New York and a man is asking people on the street at random if they are familiar with Bakelite. None of them knows what it is, but most think it is related to food. We meet ...

An alternative to wood and metal, Bakelite took over kitchen drawers in the early 20th century, as manufacturers applied the hard, colorful plastic to the handles of beaters, dough blenders, ...

Bakelite is the seminal precursor of modern-day plastics, developed in the early 1900s by a Belgian chemist named Leo Baekeland. It includes natural wood flour and heat-set phenol formaldehyde resin, ...

Made of a combination of phenol and formaldehyde, Bakelite is a type of plastic that became popular during the 1930s and 40s as a material not only for jewelry, but for other consumer goods like ...

Baekeland was hardly alone in his quest for a better varnish. The shellac issue was one of the hot topics of chemical research at the turn of the century. The sole source of shellac was the excretions ...