Early one morning, we went up to the National Academy of Design, on Fifth Avenue, to view a number of objects, some of a utilitarian nature, some of an aesthetic nature, that were all made of something called Prime-Foam-X. Prime-Foam-X is in fact the clay-coated paper-and-foam backing used for mounting photographs. The clay-coated paper-and-foam backing used for mounting photographs was first put on the market by the Monsanto Company, which called it Fome-Cor. Its generic name is foam board. Almost everybody who uses a clay-coated paper-and-foam backing, however, calls it Fome-Cor, the way almost everybody who has a cold uses Kleenex, and not tissue. The makers of Prime-Foam-X may have thought it unfortunate that the Monsanto product has always been No. 1 in the foam-board market. In any case, they decided to have a contest. They invited people to make objects from their product.
At the exhibit, we were met by a woman representative of
the Prime-Foam-X company—the Primex Plastics Corporation—and she showed us around. We saw a skeleton of a dinosaur with its head lowered, as if the flesh had been stripped away while it fed. We saw something that was said to be a Relativity Chronolith and seemed to have something to do with the Mayan Indians. We saw Portrait of Miss Bowles, a print of a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, in a frame that was made from Prime-Foam-X but attempted to look like mahogany. We saw a large cutout of a man with a blue coat, gray trousers, and a yellow-and-gray tie; his special significance was never clear to us. We saw a game that was so new it had not been patented yet. We saw a chair, hand-carved in the Queen Anne style, but we were warned that it could not support a grownup human body. We saw a portable desk, labelled “Calligrapher’s Desk.” We saw a doll-sized round house, with unreal potted plants inside it and framed paintings on the walls. We saw a collapsible lamp. We saw a present-day sports car. We saw a sports car that was said to belong in the future.
Our guide now said that perhaps we would like to see the helicopter, which was being housed in the church next door, it being too big for the Design building. She said, “You cannot imagine the remarkable versatility of this product. The astounding thing is that no one ever thought you could do all this with a piece of foam.” We walked over to the church, and saw something that looked like a helicopter in a highly imaginative school pageant. For one thing, the frame was made from the frame of an old wicker wheelchair—stripped of its
wicker. Our guide pointed to the person who had made the helicopter. It was a man, and he wore black trousers and a black tunic covered with concave mirrors—an important part of the Polaroid SX-70 Land camera.
At noon, we went down to “21,” where Phelps Dodge Industries was giving a lunch to introduce some expensive decorative household wares, all made out of brass. They are done in something called the Federal Period, and they are a wine cooler, a basket suitable for holding fruit, a bowl suitable for holding fruit, a tray, a compote dish, and a plate. Many of the guests looked at them, and many of the guests thought them beautiful. After the lunch, which many of the guests said was delicious, a man, an executive of Phelps Dodge Industries, made a speech. He said that people had thought his company audacious, impudent, and foolhardy to go into the consumer business. He mentioned someone who had been orphaned at age eleven and had apprenticed himself to a saddlemaker. He said that brass was a hot item. He said that the competition was foreign and its products were generally of a poor quality. He said that there was no real standard for brass. He said that there was little evidence of professional design in brass products. He said that eighty-five per cent of all brass products are purchased by women. He said that some people found brass too yellow. He said that his company was the No. 2 producer of copper in this country. He seemed to have no doubt that this new venture would be a big success.
—July 12, 1982