On this Clever Extra, we peek under the surface of the most defining patterns of the last century. Formica is a decorative laminate so ubiquitous its patterns have come to serve as a record of history and visual representation of our collective consciousness through the years. Meghan Howell, Creative Director with Formica, and Art Director and Editor of the book Beyond Boomerang: A Celebration of 110 Years of Formica Patterns by Shawn Patrick Tubb, takes us on the Formica team’s investigative mission into the backstories, revelations, controversies, and questions contained within our most recognizable surfaces.

Please visit Formica.com to learn more about Beyond Boomerang: A Celebration of 110 Years of Formica Patterns.

Amy Devers: This special presentation of Clever is brought to you by Formica and was recorded live from the NeoCon podcast studio, powered by SURROUND and sponsored by SnapCab. With special thanks to Master & Dynamic, the official headphone sponsor of the SURROUND podcast network. Hi everyone, I’m Amy and this is Clever. In this special Clever Extra we are peeking under the surface of the most defining patterns of the last century. Formica, a decorative laminate, has been so reliable and ubiquitous in the design of our built world… in homes, offices, schools, hotels, and restaurants… that its bold and iconic patterns have come to serve as a record of history and a visual representation of our collective consciousness through the years. You are undoubtedly familiar with Boomerang, the era-defining mid-century modern pattern. But did you know that Boomerang was NOT the original name? And do you know the controversy over WHO designed this pattern? In the recently released book, Beyond Boomerang: A celebration of 110 Years of Formica Patterns, they’ve gone on a deep dive into the archives - to unearth the stories, celebrate the individuals, and connect the dots to the social movements and technological advancements that that are contained within the visual language of their patterns, and it is fascinating! Researching and uncovering these stories was it’s own investigative mission - I’m here with Meghan Howell, a Brand and Creative Leader with Formica, to talk about that mission - including the surprising revelations, the atypical scenarios in which she found herself searching for clues, and the unsolved mysteries that continue to haunt her… here’s Meghan.
Meghan Howell: I've been at Formica Corporation for 10 years. My role has slightly evolved over the 10 years. I started as a creative services manager over everything creative, kind of in the marketing department. In the last couple years, I've advanced to being a role as a creative director. So half of my team is doing the marketing, creative, the photography, the videos, the storytelling, half of the team is doing the product development and creating the great products that we sell. You're
Amy Devers: You’re like the galactic overlord of Formica!
MH: It's a very short summary, when people ask, I say if it's creative and it comes out of formica, someone on my team has touched it in some way.
AD: So I'm just processing how ubiquitous Formica is in the built world. Yo personally have a lot of power in terms of your impact on the way the built world reflects ourselves back to us.
MH: It's super fun. It's a really cool job to be able to create something, follow the trends, create things that go into built environments, and then market them and tell their stories.I mean, it's like very full circle.
AD: Well, speaking of telling the story, I know it's for Michael it’s a 110…
MH: We are 110 hundred
AD: So that's deep roots, long legacy. That's a whole lot of history. How have you been involved in capturing that and compiling it so that we can kind of understand how it's been a companion to society for so long?
MH: It’s really nice because I joined Formica when we were in the middle of celebrating our hundredth. I came in in a really important year when they were telling stories already. We were talking about where the company had been. We had fantastic global parties celebrating the hundredth. We did a hundredth anniversary collection with Abbott Miller and Pentagram.
So I almost came in in a great storytelling foundational year from my start of my career there. So the last 10 years of that has been focused on the future and you know, what are the next hundred gonna be? And 110 seems like an odd year to celebrate. But being lightly in marketing, you wanna always have a reason to be in front of the customer.
So we decided two years ago we were gonna take the 110th and use it as a year to tell the stories of the people that designed the patterns, which is really unique and it kind of gives me goosebumps even saying it now.
AD: I got 'em right now. I do have them. You know, I'm all about the people. So I was really excited to talk to you about this.
MH: Formica is so product based and every other anniversary we've had throughout, I mean, they did a big thing at 75, the big celebrations at 100. It was all kind of corporate Formica was invented, Formica made this innovation. Formica was bought by this company. We expanded to this country. So important stuff, but not connected to the pattern and the design that made Formica what it is today.
AD: And the humanity that, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
MH: That powered that these, these people, you know, the man behind the curtain. That designed the amazing pattern that went essentially viral, you know, across the globe. Yeah. Back in the sixties. That made it what it's today.
AD: Yes.
MH: So that's, that's how we are where we are right now.And at NeoCon, that's what we're talking about.
AD: So you went back through 110 years of history to find the stories of. How these patterns came to be and track them to the humans that were involved in creating them. That sounds like a dream job because I kind of think of myself as part detective. I'm imagining there was a lot of detective work in that.
MH: There's a lot of detective work. We got to do some really cool archive diving in the Smithsonian, in the Hagley.
AD: I know you've just issued a book called Beyond Boomerang.
MH: Yes.
AD: I've been flipping through it. It's so, it's so gorgeous and it's such a lovely compendium of history and the way you know, the patterns throughout the years have really reflected the ethos of the people and the Forward by Abbott Miller is, is great. But then there's also this moment in the introduction that I think really sums up the book in a beautiful way. I wanna read it for a second, if you're okay with that.
MH: Yeah, go for it.
AD: While the underlying component layers have changed a little since its inception, the magic of Formica laminate lies in its seemingly infinite regeneration over the years to match the current moment as one surveys the depths of the company's historic catalog, that's you. It becomes clear that through the use of pattern, texture, and color, the character of each progressive collection went to great effort to echo our collective values, illuminate the promise and limitations of our current technology, and perhaps even offer a glimpse of our aspirations in a given moment in time.
MH: He’s so great, isn't he?
AD: That's a magic combination of words, but I think it really captures how objects don't lie. Right? Objects reflect us back to us. They're created by people who are living in these moments and they're reflecting what's going on in the collective around us. And now you have 110 years of pattern…to see the patterns over the years. And so this is all compiled together in a beautiful book that ties these patterns back to what's going on in the world. From the roaring twenties to the optimism of World War II to the space race. To the opulence of the eighties. I mean, all of this stuff is sort of cataloged through these patterns.What I'm really excited to talk to you about is what you're just about to get into is the detective work to trace these patterns back to the humans. And I think you began this during Covid, right?
MH: We did.
AD: All right. So tell me the whole thing.
MH: We had the realization we were coming up on this anniversary and knowing we didn't have the stories. We knew where they were. We knew they were out there, we wanted to tell them, but Formica has been bought and sold so many times. You lose a lot of archives depending on who your people are at the time and what their resources are when a company's bought and sold.
AD: Oh yeah. So there's big gaps.
MH: There are gaps, or there are certain Formica zealots that hold onto stuff cuz they were there and they loved it so they can be keepers. Or you had one fantastic person at a PR company that put things in boxes and donated it to the museum. Thankfully. So we were discovering these pockets and then going into things like finding out who our advertising firms were at certain times and going into their company archives, or we went to the Hagley, which is where Raymond Lowey archives ended up. So you were discovering things through all these different places. And then when you were talking about it being like a, a research detective project, I've been doing this in the evenings out of, you know, heart and fun. So, you know, sitting there with my husband on my laptop at night on mid-century modern message boards, like, hi, my name's Meghan Howell. I'm the creative director at Formica. We're trying to tell these stories, so I will randomly get Facebook messages or emails from people that read this. I have this original sheet of 1951, whatever. Would you like it?
AD: Oh my gosh. That is so amazing.
MH: Yeah, it's super amazing. It's really fun. Those stories of those people too. Um, we have a piece of furniture in the office that is from the 1964 World House. The daughter of the man who was a salesman and won National Salesman of the Year that year won the furniture as a prize. She grew up with this furniture in her house. And when he passed away and she's going through his thing, she's like, I think I should get this back to its home. So we got this furniture that is still in fantastic shape today because Formica is really durable Of course. And it looks incredible.
AD: And it's cigarette proof, which is –
MH: Right, right. And it's cigarette proof. But there are just these wonderful people out there that have these great stories and I love that they have the appreciation to bring it home.
AD: There's connection to it. I think that, you know, the humanity associated with a product is certainly traced back to the creators and everybody, and the engineers and everybody who brought it into being, but it's also really connected to the people who love it and care for it and steward it. It becomes part of the collective consciousness in that I know so many of my memories have Formica as part of the visual landscape of what that memory is. So I bet you met a lot of really interesting people and a lot of them had affectionate feelings for, Formica.
MH: Really? Yeah. Well, and some are people that used to work at the company that are still alive today that have fantastic stories from the sixties and seventies. Some are these sons and daughters. Their parents worked there, but they know how much their parents loved working at the company. And I mean, some people like Abbott Miller has worked for us and with us, and he has great stories because he's works with the product and his work as well as works with the brand and there's all these different relationships.
AD: So piecing it together, what kind of surprised you or what were some of your favorite stories or. Personally challenging to discover the answers to. Do you have some, some stories that come to top of mind that like made this project so rewarding?
MH: Yeah. First, I'll tell you about going through the Smithsonian during Covid, because this was a surreal experience. I think, you know a lot of people, I'm not gonna say everybody, but a lot of people have been to the Smithsonian Wonderful facility. It's so amazing to walk through there and they have a reading room today. You know, you or I could request to see certain archives and go sit in their reading room in the actual Smithsonian. Well, during Covid, it wasn't open. So we were talking to the archivists there and they're like, yeah, we can get you in. You can see your things, but it's not gonna be in the reading room. And we're not, you know, really caring where it is. But the story was very cool because we met at their offsite facility. The archivist took us in his car to these war bunkers that are just filled with different things. Old corn mill stones just sitting out in the open. They have, oh, I mean, carts and carts and bookshelves of paper. So we're sitting in a bunker with this lovely Smithsonian archivist at regular normal, you know, fold out, fold out chairs and tables.
We had to like order DoorDash, Chipotle, yes. Cause you couldn't get into restaurants still, but we're just flipping through things and taking cell phone pictures. We're actually going back later this fall to continue to go through these because there are so many.
AD: So that is a very behind the scenes way to interact with the Smithsonian.
MH: Right. And we did it for three days and it was so intimate and really just an incredible experience.
AD: Okay. So you're at a folded table eating Chipotle and like are, are you pulling banker boxes off the shelves?
MH: So we were doing a couple things looking through old catalogs. We're trying to date when things were launched, when they were discontinued, going through old catalogs, going through press releases, going through news articles, depending how things were filed. Sometimes we're finding like old T-shirts that were from a sales meeting or we're getting notes on paper from someone's desk. Some are really neat.
AD: Some are illegible.
MH: Yeah. So well or nothing, you know, like call Janet. Yeah. But all of that is in the Smithsonian. They keep it all. One of the interesting things is, our founders, O'Connor and Faber, like his passports in his whole like realtor receipts for his house in Florida in there. So we're asking the archivist, why do you keep these in here?Like this is, it's part of Formica history, but this is his personal things. And they're like, oh, people come in here to research like old businessmen agendas.
AD: Wow.
MH: It's really random. It's all over the place. So I can't even say that it was easy to research there, cuz you're just going through every single thing trying to determine does this box have significance? Does this single paper have significance? And there's a lot we still need to get through. So we're going back this fall, which will be nice to continue digging.
AD: This reminds me of those genealogy shows where they're like digging through census records and things like that where you…
MH: I'm gonna find a grandpa that used to worked at Formica, that I didn't know about.
AD: Yes, it’s probably is in your history somehow. So that sounds super fun to me. I love anything that's behind the scenes and you're getting special access to a place that the general public doesn't get to see. And special attention from an archivist. As you're going through all of these items, not really understanding yet if they have significance to your project, are you getting a clearer picture of Formica and its inner workings, its guts?
MH: I think I got a really good perspective of how the company has changed through different owners, which was very interesting because stepping into the company, you know, looking at the whole history, only having been here a second, but understanding how the company changed. In the fifties and sixties, in the eighties due to who was owning the company.Those things were interesting to learn along the way.
AD: Okay. So understanding that the company has sort of been through different leadership throughout the years, what is the creative trajectory? Are you able to trace the patterns back to individuals in-house or collaborative relationships that the patterns came to being? Are you able to see which patterns were given favor and which were “x”ed?
MH: We definitely don't have the full picture yet. This book is capturing where we are today in research and telling the stories we have today. But some of the things that were really interesting coming out of that Smithsonian work was learning what partners we worked with early on. Originally Formica was a substitute for mica, so we were making gears and electrical parts. When the r and d department discovered you could put a decor paper on top, we started doing some very basic marbles and some wood grains that were used in soda fountains and radios, not fully being the decor laminate that we are today or that we became in the fifties. They weren't using in-house designers at the time. This was still kind of like learning what this decor laminate is going to be. They started hiring outside designers, and one of the stories I love the most is the first partnership we have record of is a designer Morris B Sanders, and he was an early modernist.We kind of got in on the ground floor with him before he was really well known, the pattern. He launched with us very first and was patented, our first patented design is called Moonglo. It's inspired by like the moon's reflections on water. Really kind of amazing. Unfortunately, he passed away before the pattern could launch and before his career really took off.
AD: Wait, so he was more famous posthumously?
MH: Yes. He has a historic home, like his old studio in New York City. But like his trajectory just like never really took off. But he was our first partnership.
AD: This first partnership took place in what decade?
MH: Uh, thirties.
AD: And so is it hand drawn?
MH: thinking about technology at the time, it's possible it would hand drawn to screen print.
AD: Yeah. For the listeners, essentially Formica is layers of paper and resin pressed together under extreme pressure and heat to form a really, really durable surface.
MH: Yes. The top layer is the printed decor, which has evolved through time, depending on different printing processes, and today, How good scanning and printing can make that really really realistic.
AD: Right. Okay. So Moonglo was the first partnership with MorrisBb Sanders, but he passed away before he got to see it launched.
MH: Yeah, before it could even go live. And we have a printed press release where he gave an interview saying, Other things he had lined up to launch. It's heartbreaking, but it's a really kind of incredible untold story that we didn't know before we started doing this research. We didn't know about this pattern for the hundredth book. Wow. So it's these really important nuggets that we found just sifting through press releases that look like stapled pieces of paper together. Like, is this gonna be significant? Let me flip through 14 pages.
AD: And do you have samples of moonglo?
MH: We do.
AD: Oh that's amazing. Do you know historically, like what it was typically used for?
MH: Very early on it was mostly countertops. Countertops, especially residentially. Okay. Um, commercially, We were doing radios and soda fountains first, we were working with other manufacturers to make products, and then it kind of exploded like in the forties and fifties, especially post World War. We were in 60% of homes during the housing boom. We were in trains, we were in airplanes. Uh, that's how we got into working with Brooke Stevens and Raymond Lowey because they were working on those sorts of vehicles. So they started doing patterns specifically for their vehicles.
AD: Oh, of course. That's an organic collaboration.
MH: Yeah.
AD: What kinds of patterns came from those?
MH: So, Brook Stevens, the fun story and something that's kind of debated on those mid-century modern boards I was talking about is who designed boomerang. Some people historically have given credit to Raymond Lowy. Some have given credit to Brooke Stevens.So the story straight, you've heard it here. It was a designer named John Hughes. At Brook Stevens, he hand penned the drawing to go into locomotives that they were working on. The original design is called Skylark, so we launched Skylark originally under his direction after we left working with Brook Stevens, Raymond Lowy re-colorized it.
AD: Okay. That's why all these names are attached to it.
MH: Yeah. And what I believe is those colors were probably more successful than the first set of colors. So that's why historically people kind of give him a little more credit. And we worked with Raymond Lowey a lot longer in our history than we did Brooke Stevens.
AD: Okay. But the original creator of Boomerang is John Hughes?
MH: Yeah. Is neither of the famous men. It was called Skylark until 1988. We did a 75th anniversary collection relaunched it and at that time named it Boomerang. I think the reason that happened is people had started calling it Boomerang, even though it was named Skylark.I just think in conversation people, oh, the Boomerang countertop, the, you know, Formica, boomerang, so we're, oh, well we might as well own it.
AD: I mean, that's how you know something is so popular is the general public renames it for you because they have a common vernacular that everybody understands.
MH: Well, and today we still have a boomerang in our line, but we also call people that leave the company and come back. We call them boomerangs.
AD: Does that happen a lot?
MH: More than you might think.
AD: Really?
MH: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's this industry, right? Gotta leave, try something else. Come back. Love for the brand.
AD: You had a great story I think you told me about Ondine. Uh, you know I have an Ondine table. Do you a vintage one? I've had it since I was an undergrad.
MH: Oh, that's so fun.
AD: And I can't let it go because don't, I've had so many amazing conversations around this table. So much of my life is transpired around this green table, but I got it at thrift store.
MH: Yeah, please don't throw it away.
AD: Never. Never.
AD: Yeah. So Ondine was designed during kind of the psychedelic era, so you think of the very groovy patterns of the sixties and seventies. So we found the story again in the Smithsonian, and it was in a press release that had a giant X through it. So it was a redacted press release that never went out. I'm even flipping through this folder and I'm thinking, I'm like, well, I don't wanna read this. This isn't relevant.
AD: Yeah. Not even public record.
MH: Yeah not even relevant. This has never hit even. It's in someone's folder, their desk files that went to the Smithsonian. So I'm reading this thing, I'm like, oh, why didn't they want it out? Or is this a draft? Is there, you know, the final ones behind this, maybe what we learned about Ondineis it was a proprietary process. They didn't want to publish. So that's why it was redacted. They were holding this process of how they were creating the pattern away from the competition. Thinking about those groovy, psychedelic patterns Ondine was created by the engineers at Formica. We didn't have an in-house design team yet, so this is engineers coming up with a printing process and they were layering ink, floating ink on top of water. So getting, you know, this lovely watery pattern and laying single sheet down by single sheet.
AD: Oh my gosh. Okay.
MH: Each sheet is unique and each sheet has an unrepeatable pattern, which was unheard of at the time today. Very popular and laminate. We have the printing technology to do that, but in the sixties and seventies, very unique. So I understand why they didn't want it out.
AD: Were they on psychedelics when they created this?
MH: That was not in the press release. I can't speak to that.
AD: My Ondine table just got even more special now that I, there's not another one out there. Well, if I did psychedelics around the green table. Maybe I could have the kind of mind meld with the original engineers.
MH: Yeah. There we go.
AD: That's, that's my plan. So, in terms of the people, the creatives behind these patterns, what kinds of stories did you dig up?
MH: After we stopped working with those outside designers, we had a company sold and they decided that working with outside designers wasn't worth the return and they wanted to start hiring and developing in-house, which was very exciting.We still have in-house today. One of my favorite stories from that process is there was a woman named Sharon Deleon. Back then, you know, you go in for an interview as a pattern maker and you bring your big prints of patterns you've developed and hand drawn. So she went through an interview and they bought patterns from her book during the interview.
AD: Before she's even?
MH: before she's even hired.
AD: That's a good interview, right?
MH: Knocked it outta the park. Well, I'm making money before they even hire me! So they buy some patterns from her and they launch one called Halifax before she's hired. Halifax is delightful. It's very small like stars and squares and flowers. It's really, really pretty. It's got the hand drawn quality. It's very lovely. So she eventually gets hired. She already has patterns in the line, which is amazing. Women being hired during this time is also very rare. Think about Mad Men and all of our sales meeting photos from the fifties and sixties are all men. And then you start seeing Sharon in these pictures. During that time, she's doing all the work, but she has male bosses. She eventually gets to be the first female design director, which is very exciting. And she is still alive today. And our North American Principal of Design, Renee Hightree, actually interviewed her for this book. So she, she's in the bibliography, is having told some of these stories.
AD: Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. And was she delighted to be able to capture her history in this way?
MH: Yeah, I think so.
AD: Because she was around during those decades?
MH: She took part in the 75th book. This is part of her story being carried on too, which it's all the stories of all the people that made all the patterns. And she is part of that tapestry. This book is what we've documented so far, and it's really important to get it out there because it is history and it's been discovered. So now this is real. We're going back to the Smithsonian this fall. We're still learning things. I do have open stories that I don't have the answers to yet.
AD: This is the Unsolved Mysteries.
MH: Yes. So I'm putting this call out. If you hear this and you've seen this, give us the all the clues. Meghan.howell@formica.com. There is an ad that we found in our advertising agencies. Portfolio. So they have all of the ads they've ever done, and they noted them at the bottom what magazines they were in. So if it was in a magazine, that means the color was launched and there is this pattern called homespun. It looks like a very loose weave pattern. It looks to be marketed directly to the furniture manufacturing group. It was in magazines like Furniture Age, furniture Manufacturing. It's in the 1950s.
AD: Okay, so really going for the furniture trade?
MH: Yes. Like it was only in the furniture pubs. But we don't have a sample of this material. We can't find it in a catalog.
AD: It exists but there's no record of it?
MH: It exists except maybe it only exists in this ad that is in the advertising agencies.
AD: But it's not a draft of an ad, it's an actual published ad?
MH: No. The rest of this book in the advertising agency's archives shows where things were published, and we know they were published there. We've been able to find them in magazines. So unless this one… hey canceled it, but they had, I mean, it could be something very weird like that, that it just never went to launch and they never actually dropped the ad, but this made it into that book.
AD: This is a missing laminate case. Yes. So, okay. For everybody out there, if you know anything about Homespun or -
MH: Or those publications in the fifties.
AD: Yeah, yeah. Or anybody who was associated with Formica in the fifties that might have more clues.
MH: A sample of homespun.
AD: Yeah, still out there. Any other unsolved mysteries?
MH: There is one other, there is a pattern called Fernglo. I've put this one out on the mid-century modern boards and people keep sending me one from the sixties. I'm not talking about the one from the sixties. There was a second fernglow. I don't know why we reuse the name, but that's not the one I'm talking about. I'm talking about the fern glow from the fifties.
AD: Okay. So, so even that, there's two mysteries here.
MH: Okay, yeah, so this fern glow is a Brooke Stevens Pattern launched the same year as Skylark. I have multiple ads showing them together. I have catalogs that show them together and show them for sale. Fernglow came in a bunch of different patterns. It is kind of like an icy, pearly pattern. Instead of it being really fluid, it looks like fern leaves. We don't have samples of it. I have chains, so many Formica chains from the fifties, like with the original Skylark, but there are no fernglow on these chains.
AD: Do you have any record of any other patterns being discontinued and therefore like removed from chains?
MH: It could be possible.
AD: The fact that they use the name again, wouldn't that cause a lot of confusion? If there were actually two fernglows in the catalog?
MH: Right. The fifties version would not have been around when the second one came out. Tat's kind of it for the formica code. We also don't reuse numbers within 20 years of discontinuation. So to avoid confusion because all of our products have a name and a number.
AD: So do you have a name and a number for the original?
MH: We do.
AD: And the second fernglow. And is there more than 20 years in between them?
MH: I would need to look back to absolutely know, but the patterns don't look at all alike.
AD: Is it possible that FernGlow, the second one, like the first one, was already lost to institutional memory?
MH: Totally possible.
AD: And they just made a new pattern and thought Fern Glow was a great name.
MH: That might, that might be true. The second one was developed by a gentleman named Bob Ford, who is the design director. Also a person we interviewed for the book that had so many great stories to tell us about. He hand drew that one. He hand drew Willow. He had a lot of fantastic additions and stories for this book. I don't know if we asked him about why he used the name, but the original, the Brook Stevens Fernglow is kind of lost. It's gonna, it's gonna keep me searching and then I'm gonna have more questions and I'm gonna keep looking and this is just the rest of my life now.
AD: Yes, I can see how invested you are. I truly hope when this hits the airwaves that more clues come in for you.
MH: That would be so nice.
AD: You'd have to keep me posted. So, digging back through 110 years of history and really tying these patterns back to the. The humans who created them, and you're seeing sort of the evolution of society through the evolution of Formica in terms of the first female creative director. I mean, it's just such a depth. So when a company's been around for 110 years, there's a lot of presence it has in the world, in the built world, in our psychic space, so many memories are attached to it. There's also a lot of responsibility. Were you getting a sense of the company values and, and what's important in terms of compiling this history, not just to sell more product? Being proud of your history is great, but like what's at the heart?
MH: Yeah. Like you said, this book is not about selling more product and it's not just about pandering to our mid-century modern fans, even though we love them. This book is about the tie to the craft, the tie to the development, storytelling, the people that made this brand amazing.So some of these people are really famous names. We have Jonathan Adler. In this book we have Abbott Miller. In this book we have Brook Stevens in the this book and Raymond Lowey. And then we have people like John Hughes and Netty Hart and Sharon De Leone and Bob Ford
AD: And Morris B Sanders
MH: And Morris B Sanders. Yeah. And those people spent their lives and spent their time and spent their effort and their heart developing these patterns for a brand that they loved. That's important to tell that story. I mean, that is heart. That is people, that is the human side of the product and the brand, the very big brand at a very small level.
AD: It seems like it's a small level, but it's actually pervasive. Right? It is the constant. Through everything is the people. It's – It's the heartbeat.
MH: It is. It's a heartbeat. It's, it's a very small thing, but it is keeping everything alive.
AD: Agreed. And of course, you know, I love people and creative people, and so telling their stories is important for so many reasons but I think it's also important for us as just dwellers of the built world because when the built world loses its soul and it doesn't reflect ourselves back to us, we start to feel vacant, disposable, generic. And that's a downgrade to our quality of life, to our sense of self, to our connections and our relationships. So the humanity coming through the product. Is influencing the way we inhabit the world and that's so important.
MH: I like to tie it also back to that childhood feeling when you took that thing to your parent, like, I made a thing. That as an adult it's sometimes hard to talk about that thing that you made, that you're really proud of cuz you're either embarrassed or you don't wanna brag. So I hope, and I'm very humbled to have taken part in this book. And told people stories whose stories weren't told about the things they made.
AD: I wanna tell you a story about something I made with Formica.
MH: Please tell me. Tell me, tell me.
AD: So I'm a furniture designer. I'm trained as a furniture designer. In my undergrad years, I'm still kind of learning woodworking and technical. I designed this series of tables that were different tiers and they had lazy Susans in between 'em. So you could reconfigure the whole thing. And each one had a different formica laminate. I remember like, you know, learning how to install laminate and what it was made of and how to work with it and how to finish the edges and I loved it and I was going for a certain vibe that kind of connected you through to this ubiquitousness of the built world. So I wanted that familiarity. And then I also started dating this musician. And I remember being on a date with him and I was telling, oh, I'm building furniture made out of formica.And he's like, oh, what kind of tree does formica come from? And I'm like, you don't –
MH: Not a formica tree
AD: Not a formica tree. That's okay. So I told him and we ended up dating anyway. That wasn't a deal breaker.
MH: Oh, that's, that's funny. We had a gentleman as we were setting up for the show this week. A little bit of egg on his face, but he says, do you know how they came up with the name Formica? And we’re like, the brand people were like, yeah, but you know, he's like, it was named after the inventor's son. No. No, it wasn't. Wait, it wasn't, but let me tell you what it was named after.
AD: But I love that there are these false myths out there.
MH: Keep, keep talking about it. Yeah, keep, keep talking about the brand. It's all good. It's all good.
AD: This has been really, really fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing this -
MH: Thanks for having me.
AD: Deep stories and, and if you ever get a chance to go back into the bunker, bring me!
MH: I am holding out hope for a volume 2 of this as we learn even more.
AD: I hope those mysteries can be solved.
MH: Yeah, me too.
AD: Cold cases Formica.. bump bump.
AD: This is awesome. Thank you so much, Meghan.
MH: Thank you. This has been lovely.
AD: Hey, thanks so much for listening. Thanks again to Formica for sponsoring this episode. To learn more about Formica and the book Beyond Boomerang, A Celebration of 110 Years of Formica Patterns, visit formica.com for pictures of these iconic patterns, a link to the book and a transcript of this episode- head to cleverpodcast.com. If you can think of 3 people who would be inspired by Clever - please tell them! It really helps us out when you share Clever with your friends. You can listen to Clever on any of the podcast apps - please do hit the Follow or subscribe button in your app of choice so our new episodes will turn up in your feed. We love to hear from you on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter - you can find us @cleverpodcast and you can find me @AmyDevers. Please stay tuned for upcoming announcements and bonus content. You can subscribe to our newsletter at cleverpodcast.com to make sure you don’t miss anything. Clever is hosted & produced by me, Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephanand music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is a proud member of the Surround podcast network. Visit surroundpodcasts.com to discover more of the Architecture and Design industry’s premier shows.

Meghan Howell, Creative Director with Formica

Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.