| The past is a valuable resource for designers, filled with ideas that can be adapted and modernized. This isn't wholesale pillage but what goes around invariably comes around: everything old will be new again. That's our recent experience with Tenite™ cellulosics - a material that dates back to the 1930s. Created from wood pulp, Tenite™ brings together the manufacturing advantages of a plastic with the emotive feel and sound of natural fibers, making it an alternative to urethane in applications where the designer wants to really connect.
Ask Frank Thomas, founder of Frankly Golf and chief technical advisor to The Golf Channel. He uses Tenite™ to give his revolutionary F-16 Stealth Putter a natural tone: “What rings true will feel good,” says Frank. Or consider the d_skin™ – a cellulosic layer that protects CDs and DVDs from everyday marks and scratches, even when they're playing. It also works with PlayStation®2, Xbox™ and most other console games – and you don't get more modern than that.
In the 1930s cellulosics were used to make screwdriver handles, buttons, desk accessories and fountain pens. Today, the material is widely used in everything from toothbrushes to playing cards, dice and, yes, tool handles. But why be bound by convention and the mundane? The appeal of cellulosics covers a much wider canon. That’s why when IDEO teamed up with Eastman to develop the Collective Vision portfolio of funky eyewear, half of the designers turned to Tenite™ for their projects: because touch and feel is not limited to what we do with our hands.
Cellulosics have the inherent characteristics of wood and are:
- Glossy and tough, yet soft
- Easily extruded, easily molded
- Available in intense or translucent colors
- Easily polished and handcrafted
- Flexible
- Simply joined to other tactile materials such as wood, copper and elastomers
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