Vintage Flamingos

Some blame filmmaker John Waters for the ubiquity of pink flamingos in American pop culture, thanks to his 1972 exercise in bad taste named after the long-necked birds. Others credit the late Don Featherstone for transforming this elegant, tropical creature into a ridiculous example of mid-century American kitsch—in the 1950s, Featherstone used a pink flamingo he'd seen in the pages of "National Geographic" magazine as inspiration for a plastic lawn ornament he designed for his employer, Union Products. And then there were all those 20th-century postcards of Florida, many of which lured visitors to the Sunshine State by promising them flocks of flamingos rising, alighting, and wading in picturesque settings. In fact, it was 19th-century naturalist and painter John J. Audubon who first brought the flamingos he saw off a small island in the Florida Keys in 1832 to the attention of many Americans. Audubon's hand-colored print of an American flamingo, whose Latin name, Phoenicopterus ruber, was codified by Linnaeus in 1758, showed a flamingo on the bank of a marsh, its neck bent low to the ground, no doubt to get as much of the bird as possible into the artist's vertical format. Audubon's flamingo was one of more than 400 birds he drew for The Birds of America, a double-elephant folio book published in five parts in Edinburgh and London between 1827 and 1838. Flamingos (sometimes spelled "flamingoes") have fascinated us ever since, and we often wanted more than just plastic flamingos for our lawns. After World War II, numerous ceramics companies, including Will-George of Pasadena, California, produced slip-mold figurines of flamingos, some bent to the ground as in Audubon's print, others with heads erect, their necks creating a classic "S" shape. Other Florida-themed souvenir goods such as tablecloths and tea towels were also decorated with flamingos, while flamingos were also a favorite of costume jewelers, who fashioned them into pins and brooches.