Tupperware

by Clarke, Alison J.

• ISBN13: 9781560989202
• ISBN10: 1560989203
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2001-02-17
• Publisher: Smithsonian Books

Summary

From Wonder Bowls to Ice-Tup molds to Party Susans, Tupperware has become an icon of suburban living. Tracing the fortunes of Earl Tupper's polyethylene containers from early design to global distribution, Alison J. Clarke explains how Tupperware tapped into potent commercial and social forces, becoming a prevailing symbol of late twentieth-century consumer culture. Invented by Earl Tupper in the 1940s to promote thrift and cleanliness, the pastel plasticwares were touted as essential to a postwar lifestyle that emphasized casual entertaining and celebrated America's material abundance. By the mid-1950s the Tupperware party, which gathered women in a hostess's home for lively product demonstrations and sales, was the foundation of a multimillion-dollar business that proved as innovative as the containers themselves. Clarke shows how the "party plan" direct sales system, by creating a corporate culture based on women's domestic lives, played a greater role than patented seals and streamlined design in the success of Tupperware.

Author Biography

Alison J. Clarke lectures on design history and material culture at the Royal College of Art in London and is a visiting professor of design history and theory at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
"To Be a Better Social Friend" Designing for a Moral Economy	p. 8
Tupperware The Creation of a Modernist Icon?	p. 36
"Poly-T: Material of the Future" A Gift of Modernity	p. 56
"The Hostess with the Mostest" The Origins of the Home Party Plan	p. 78
"Parties Are the Answer" The Ascent of the Tupperware Party	p. 101
"Faith Made Them Champions" The Feminization of Positive Thinking	p. 128
"A Wealth of Wishes and Galaxy of Gifts" The Politics of Consumption	p. 156
"Tupperware--Everywhere!" The Globalization of Tupperware	p. 185
Conclusion	p. 197
Notes	p. 203
Index	p. 235
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.