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Show Page 10 Home Magazine, THE DAILY HERALD, Friday. October 16, 1998 Exhibit shows when plastic furniture was the ftitur By BARBARA MAYER For AP Special Features - From KATONAH. N.Y. refrigerator containers to carpets, plastics are part of almost every aspect of home life. But few of us probably spend much time thinking about their aesthetics. It was different in the 1960s, when bright, plastic furniture, accessories space-age-lookin- g and small appliances burst upon the scene. "Plastics like melamine, acrylics, ABS and PVC, perfected during World War II, freed the imaginations of designers around the world to create objects that had no historic precedent," Scott Reilly says. Reilly is the curator of a lively museum exhibition called "Pop Goes the Plastic." The small but colorful show, which originated at the Atlanta International Museum earlier this year, is at the Katonah Museum of Art through Nov. 29. The exhibition, subtitled "The Visual and Cultural Esthetic of a New Technology documents the era 1960-1975,- " in which plastic home furnishings became a style statement. "While plastics weren't new in the '60s, technological advances and the introduction of injection molds allowed for the mass production of large items by around 1960," Reilly says. The promise of mass production led designers of plastics furnishings to believe they could realize a dream of modernism and make interesting designs for the masses. The dream failed. The designs were not especially affordable, since they were made in small quantities. And items by top names, mainly Italians, were costly to import. Perhaps even more disappointing to the designers, most people didn't want them. "Inflate, assemble, use and throw away were the operative terms from the designers' point of view," Reilly says. "Prom the point of view of many consumers, home furnishings were not something to be used and discarded." By 1973, Pop Art, the 6pace race and the youth rebellion all of which played a role in the The Associated Press Artsy ttoctronics: Radios by Sanyo and Panasonic, both from 1970, and a 1971 fan by Braun show the space-ag- e influence on plastic home furninshings design. were fadplastics aesthetic so were and ing, plastic home furnishings. The energy crisis drove The prices even higher. American bicentennial celebration and the ecological movement of the '70s, both emphasizing natural materials and tradition, brought a further halt to futuristic design. "Earth tones were in and avocado replaced lime green, yellow became gold, orange became rust, and black became brown," the curator says. Still, Reilly does not consider the plastics design movement of the '60s a failure. "It enabled designers to create provocative, imaginative, technologically advanced objects that challenged consumers to think about the ways they saw and used objects," he says. The reasons why designers loved plastic home furnishings are still with us. Plastics can be molded into useful, practical shapes and colored brightly to satisfy the desire for novelty. They are light, and easy to move and rearrange. Modular units of plastic can be added to as they are needed, and if the items are inexpensive enough they are disposable. One proof that designers were on to something is that the home furnishings they produced are now collectible. "Plastics from the '60s do really well with younger consumers who may have seen f ? f r A them on MTV and on television shows about the future," says of Form Jim Walrod, & Function, a specialty store in lower Manhattan. "Even today, nothing as advanced is on the market, so the shows use these pieces on their sets." The artifacts are being sold not only in antiques specialty blowstores. New up chairs, molded stacking h chairs, storage holders and small tables similar to the ones in the exhibit are for sale at midprice emporiums and in mail-orde- .1 catalogs. r ft The Katonah Museum of Art is on Route 22 in Katonah, N. Y. Admission is $2. Hours: Tuesday-Fridaand Sunday, J p.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Information: (914) y The AMociaied Artsy furniture: The Sacco, left, the 1969 original beanbag chair designed by Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodaro, is vinf covered and filled with polystyrene pellets. 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