SOUTHWEST HARBOR — As though heralded by the warm weather, a flock of pink flamingos landed on a patch of green in front of Southwest Harbor’s elementary school this weekend.
So did their inventor and shepherd, Donald Featherstone.
He and his wife were on hand for a special appearance in the Quietside Festival this weekened in Southwest Harbor and Tremont.
Featherstone must have felt right at home since 57 of the bright pink plastic icons dot his own yard in the summertime — a sight he said brings him down to earth and serves as a friendly reminder that the lawn ornaments he invented are “buttering his bread.”
Featherstone created the three-dimensional pink flamingo in 1957, and more than a quarter million are manufactured every year, he said.
So why is the pink plastic bird seemingly everywhere?
“Poor taste is everywhere,” said Featherstone, who added, “The flamingo isn’t in poor taste. It’s what people do with them.”
In fact, a book to be released in September honors the pink plastic bird in a photo essay. Titled “The Original Pink Flamingo: Splendor in the Grass,” the book highlights some of the funniest, most unusual flamingo arrangements.
Ducks, flamingos, puffins, gnomes, pelicans, swans, elephants, ostriches and dinosaurs are among the plethora of plastic figures Featherstone has worked on during his 43-year tenure at Leominster, Mass.-based Union Products Inc.
Of the hundreds of plastic figurines the company produces, the flamingo holds the record for steady sales — something that even Featherstone finds hard to explain.
“My duck keeps asking the same question,” he said in an interview, insisting that the hefty sales hurt his other animals’ “little plastic feelings.”
The flamingo is a lawn decoration that gives people “a little tropical elegance” for a little money, he said.
And so it goes. The pink flamingos brighten spots around the globe, with sales becoming popular in what Featherstone called “American kitsch shops” in such places as Germany, Japan and Australia. Abroad, the not-so-soft but feathered friend tends to be more expensive.
“They get ridiculous prices for this stuff,” he said.
In the states, Featherstone’s flamingos cost about $6 in Wal-Mart, $7 to $9 in other stores, and $19.95 in some catalogs. One bird sold for $130 in an antique show, he said.
If he had not pursued the world of plastic lawn art, Featherstone said, he likely would have taught in an arts school or focused on watercolors.
When he was 4, Featherstone was drawing pictures of the neighborhood bread truck. As a middle school student, he developed an affinity for the arts and studied pencil sketching and watercolors.
As a high school student, he took night and weekend courses in the fine arts, learning about photography, oil paints, architecture and design. He completed a three-year program at the Worcester Art Museum school in Worcester, Mass.
One day Union Products called the museum school when an employee left and Featherstone applied for the job. He still crafts lawn ornaments for the company but is now a partial owner.
When Featherstone arrived at the company, the pink flamingo concept existed as a two-dimensional critter. By studying National Geographic magazines, Featherstone sought to make a more realistic model.
He has continued to experiment with the flamingo concept, introducing Real Mingoes, which are life-sized birds, about 4 feet tall, with plastic and glass eyes, designed specially for people with “better poor taste,” Featherstone said.
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