Plastics have been described as "… materials that can be moulded or shaped into different forms under pressure or heat." In the twentieth century the move away from natural raw materials to synthetically produced plastics changed the way objects were produced, designed and used.
Before the arrival of synthetic resins natural plastics such as amber, horn, tortoiseshell, bitumen, shellac, gutta-percha and rubber were used to mould and manufacture artefacts. Horn was the most used of these products. As it is prone to decay in the ground little is known of its pre-history but by 1200 horn making appears in European records. Horn was a popular raw material because it could be heated and moulded and the search to mould products quickly and cheaply rather than carve them became the prime motivating force behind the development of plastics.
Horn differs from ivory, (tusks, teeth and bone) as it is made up of the keratinous hard tissue which also creates claws, hooves, hair and baleen in whales. The most frequently used of these by early European manufacturing industries were horn and baleen. Horn is found on artiodactyls (even toes ungulates) and is not to be confused with antlers which are the direct outgrowth of bone.
Horn grows around a bony core that needs to be separated before it can be worked and the most common way of doing this was to leave the severed horns in water and allow the connecting membrane to rot. As a result the horn trade was not for the faint hearted and in the 1700s the smell of rotting horn was offensive enough to ensure 'Horners' resided outside the city walls.
In the 1600s London 'Horners' began to export worked and un-worked horn from America, India, and America to Europe. Much of this horn was split into thin layers or leaves which were used as windows in lanterns or lant-horns as they were originally known. Horn was also used to make combs: buttons, fans, spoons, drinking horns, powder horns, window panes, and jewellery.
It was a popular raw material because it could be heated and moulded into a range of products as well as carved and dyed. Moulded products were faster and more economical to produce than carved ones. For this reason of horn was pivotal to the later development of plastics in Europe as the methods used to shape horn and tortoiseshell were adapted in the search for more synthetic products.
By the middle of the nineteenth century tortoiseshell and ivory were becoming expensive and this encouraged the search for alternate materials. In 1852 Alexander Parkes developed the first semi-synthetic plastic from cellulose nitrate and by 1860 it was being pressed into moulds to make billiard balls, pens, and even artificial teeth. Natural plastics like horn continued to be used well into the twentieth century but synthetic plastics are now used almost exclusively by manufacturers.
References
MacGregor, A., 'Bone, Antler, Ivory and Horn: the technology of skeletal materials since the Roman period', Barnes and Noble Books, New Jersey, 1985.
Mossman, S., (ed.), Early Plastics; perspectives, 1850-1950, Leicester University Press, London, 1997
Schaverien, A., 'Horn, its History and its Uses', Everbest Printing Co., 2006
Mossman, S., Morris, P. J. T., (eds.), 'The Development of Plastics', Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, 1993
Significance Statement, Geoff Barker, March, 2007
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