Faux real : genuine leather and 200 years of inspired fakes / Robert Kanigel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kanigel, Robert.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Leather, Artificial.

Leather substitutes.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (298 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

FauxReal

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : Joseph Henry Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

What makes genuine leather genuine? What makes real things real? In an age of virtual reality, veneers, synthetics, plastics, fakes, and knockoffs, it's hard to know. Over the centuries, men and women have devoted enormous energy to making fake things seem real. As early as the fourteenth century, fabric was treated with special oils to make it resemble leather. In the 1870's came Leatherette, a new bookbinding material. The twentieth century gave us Fabrikoid, Naugahyde, Corfam, and Ultrasuede. Each claims to transcend leather's limitations, to do better than nature itself-or at least to convince consumers that it does. Perhaps more than any other natural material, leather stands for the authentic and the genuine. Its animal roots etched in its pores and in the swirls of its grain, leather serves as cultural shorthand for the virtues of the real over the synthetic, the original over the copy, the luxurious over the shoddy and second-rate. From formica, vinyl siding, and particle board to cubic zirconium, knockoff designer bags, and genetically altered foods, inspired fakes of every description fly the polyester pennant of a brave new man-made world. Each represents a journey of scientific, technical, and entrepreneurial innovation. Faux Real explores this borderland of the almost-real, the ersatz, and the fake, illuminating a centuries-old culture war between the authentic and the imitative.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Part I. Imitating the Inimitable

1. Material World

2. "Let the Good Work Go On"

3. Leather Alive

4. Bizarre Effects

5. One Nature

6. Nothing Like Leather

7. "All Shortcomings Have Been Eliminated"

8. Top Grain

Part II. Inspired Fakes

9. What Nature Had in Mind

10. Crocodile Dreams

11. Vera Pelle

Sources and Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 250-273) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9781283899239

128389923X

9780812205596

0812205596

OCLC:

191952626