Boontonware

“Can I really drop it?”
“You should, it’s Boontonware”
Be Carefree with Boontonware.
…..

“I bet she’s dropped our Boontonware a hundred times
and not a piece ever broke.”
…..
 
“ – don’t worry, it’s Boontonware”
Guaranteed against breakage, it’s molded of Melmac.
Set a beautiful table and relax…so lovely, so colourful, it takes to
rugged family wear like nothing you’ve seen.
…..
 
So ran the advertisements for Boontonware in the 1950s, and this was precisely what the Lewis family did when my father unpacked the tea chest of exciting, and oh so un-austere, booty that he had bought back from a three-month trip to America in 1952. We dropped the bowls, cups, saucers and plates, manufactured in Boonton, New Jersey, on our floor in Horsham, Sussex, and we marvelled. They didn’t break.

A selection of our Boontonware
Image credit: Philippa Lewis

Admittedly, I was more excited by the View-Master with its 3D pictures of St Louis Zoo than the plastic tableware; and my mother declared that the salmon pink with curious whitish flecks quite hideous. Maybe, very occasionally, it was taken on picnics. But no one ever seems to have got rid of our Boontonware.  

The company’s advertisements had a perfectly reasonable claim to truth. By the early 1950s, the use of plastic dinnerware was so widespread that Consumer Reports Magazine tested and rated the workmanship, construction and design in its January 1951 issue. Of the 12 brands tested, Boontonware was “judged superior to all others,” edging out competition from Texas Ware, Arrowhead Ever Ware and Watertown Lifetime Ware. The engineers at Consumers Union noted Boontonware’s “excellent resistance to chipping and breaking” along with its “excellent durability in washing.”

Lockdown forced many of us to take stock of our belongings. The pink plastic emerged during one clear out and bought back a memory of childhood, but little else. A chance reference somewhere to a Museum of Design in Plastics led me to wonder if they would accept it as a donation – a perfect method of de-accessioning unused possessions. I identified the Boonton trademark on the base of each piece and sent off photographs.

Bingo. Katherine Pell answered enthusiastically – the museum had no pieces by this manufacturer. They now do.

Boontonware began production in 1946, the inspiration of George Scribner who owned the Boonton Moulding Company. He had noted how successful melamine dinner ware was with the Navy during the war and rightly thought it would have a wide appeal. While researching this history the fact that has most intrigued me is the discovery of industrial designer Belle Kogan, who was employed by Scribner to create the Boonton range.

Born in Russia in 1902 Kogan’s family emigrated to Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1906; her Wikipedia entry charts her education which ended at New York University which she said ‘opened my eyes to the fact that design didn't just happen. It had to be developed. I felt that it was wonderful, like a puzzle, all the parts fitted in: the business training, painting, color study, and my interest in mechanics, machinery and production problems.’

In 1932 she opened her own design studio in New York. (the following is a straight quote from Wikipedia):

She was one of the first industrial designers to experiment with plastics. Her early experimentation included celluloid toilet sets and clocks, a chrome-plated toaster with a plastic base, and Bakelite jewelry.^[6] While most designers were only experimenting with polymers she said, "In plastics the manufacturer has a material with tremendous possibilities. It is still in the active process of growth and development, but is rapidly gaining its stride. It is a material which no manufacturer, if he be alert and watchful of his competition, can afford to overlook. Radios, clocks, dishes, jewelry—all being developed in plastics today—have enormous significance."^[7] Kogan believed that "good design should keep the consumer happy and the manufacturer in the black."^[8] In an interview Kogan said, "Today there is probably no one group more keenly alive to the caprices and demands of the buying public as industrial designers. The designer's viewpoint, therefore, is a valuable one from the basis of manufacture as well as from the basis of merchandising and selling. It is a broad conception of the consumers' desire."^[7]

Now manufactured in Ashtabula, Ohio, Boontonware evidently still meets ‘the consumer’s desire’ as Belle Kogan believed designed products should.

*George Scribner was inducted in the Plastics Hall of Fame in 1974

Philippa Lewis
(recent book: Stories from Architecture, Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter, MIT Press, 2021)