Gallery
Camille Jenatzy’s electric car, 1900. Image, cci Archives / Science Photo Library.
There is probably no other inert substance
which so excites the mind.
Charles Goodyear
Balloon for War Service, 1919, Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. Plant, Akron, Ohio. Image, The U.S. National Archives, 20808426
Vulcanite Denture, Collection of British Dental Association Museum.
Volunteers Empty Boxes of Rubber Duckies into the Ala Wai Canal for the Annual Great Hawaiian Rubber Duckier Race, 2014, Photo Lance Cpl. Matthew Bragg.
Pneu Vélo Michelin, Image copyright Album / Alamy Stock Photo.
Mourning Brooch, 1850–1870, moulded rubber, metal, Made in England. © Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Sydney.
Wild rubber bodice, nylon tulle skirt. Worn by Lily Cole at the Met Gala, 2013. Designed by Vivienne Westwood and Andreas Kronthaler. Rubber harvest and process training by Flavia Amadeu. Given by Lily Cole, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, prov.489-2019.
Wood-Milne by François Kollar, Gelatin silver print, montage, 14 3/4 x 11 1/16 in., John L. Severance Fund, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2007.58. © Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
Silver Wing Bathing Shoes, ca. 1925-1930. Manufactured by Phillips, made in England, rubber, paint, casein-formaldehyde. Collection of the Bata Shoe Museum. Copyright © 2021 Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Canada.
Tapping rubber at five with light.
Having breakfast at eight.
It’s ten after rubber has been tapped
and collecting firewood on the way.
Collecting Latex.
It’s dusk and cloudy.
Rain falls and wind comes,
all hard work is in vain.
Excerpt from Song of Rubber Tapper, discovered by Chen Poh Sheng from the tape of oral interviews in the Oral History Department, Singapore. From the book A Retrospect on the Dust-Laden History, The Past and Present of Tekong Island in Singapore by Chen Poh Sheng, Lee Leong Sze
Robert Rauschenberg, Monogram, 1955–59 © Estate of Robert Rauschenberg. Image, Maderna Museet, Stockholm.
Hair Comb, ca. 1851, India Rubber Comb Company, Vulcanite, Purchase, Susan and Jon Rotenstreich Gift, 2000, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.561. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.
We certainly live in an elastic age. If we cannot break
that which opposes us, we bounce away from it with great
agility and feel not much the worse for the encounter.
There is a fair amount of caoutchouc in the human mind.
George Dodd, “India Rubber,”
Household Words (March 12, 1853)
Joe / Rubberman, 1978 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.
