![]() The flamingo even made an appearance on the silver screen. He was forever humble about the flamingo, and in fact, his wife often brought it up in conversations with people they would meet, bringing a sheepish smile from her husband, she said. "People say they're tacky, but all great art began as tacky," Featherstone said in a 1997 interview. (Charles Krupa/AP)įeatherstone, who studied art at the Worcester Art Museum, created the ornamental flamingo in 1957 for plastics company Union Products Inc., of Leominster, modeling it after photos of the birds he saw in National Geographic.įeatherstone worked at Union for 43 years, inventing hundreds of products in that time and rising to the position of president before his retirement in 1999. He was funny and had a wonderful sense of humor and he made me so happy for 40 years." Artist Don Featherstone, with his wife Nancy, at Harvard University in 2012. "He didn't have a selfish bone in his body. "He was the nicest guy in the world," Nancy Featherstone said. He died at an elder care facility in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, after a long battle with Lewy body dementia, his wife of 40 years, Nancy, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. (Amy Sancetta/AP)ĭon Featherstone was a classically trained painter, a talented sculptor and artist, who became famous for creating the pink plastic lawn flamingo - the ultimate symbol of American lawn kitsch.įeatherstone, who died Monday at 79, embraced the fame the invention brought him. His autobiography, Brush, Camera and Memories, was published in 1985.Facebook Email In this Thursday, Jphoto, Don Featherstone, creator of the original plastic pink flamingo, sits surrounded by many of the plastic creatures at Union Products, Inc. Survived by his wife and their daughter, he died on at Toowoomba and was buried in the local cemetery. ![]() He handed over his film collection to the Heritage Building Society for preservation in 1982. In retirement he taught painting at adult education classes and introduced art therapy at Baillie Henderson Hospital. Infrequently irascible, Featherstone was noted for his enthusiasm, humility and charity, and his joy in the small pleasures of an `amateur’ artistic life. Widely acknowledged as the best amateur film-maker in Australia, he won several national and international prizes for his work. He was a foundation (1952) and life member (1961) of the Darling Downs Amateur Cine Society. By 1980 he had made fifty-five films including fictional stories, travelogues, and historical epics and documentaries-mainly about the Darling Downs, including the only surviving footage of the royal visit there in 1954. He had bought a second-hand 16-mm Kodascope camera in 1926 and had begun experimenting with home and holiday films. On 27 July 1966 he was awarded the insignia of the serving brother of the Order of St John.įeatherstone’s great love was film-making. From late 1961 to June 1968 he was a nurse and, from 1965, a first-aid instructor at Toowoomba Mental (Baillie Henderson) Hospital, Willowburn. In January 1946 he became an ambulance officer and honorary instructor at the Toowoomba station of the Queensland Ambulance Transport Brigade. Rejected in 1942 for active service in the Royal Australian Air Force, he worked as a medical orderly in the Civil Constructional Corps at Wallangarra, Drayton and Canungra, and at Truscott, Northern Territory. ![]() On 25 February 1933 at St James’s Church of England, Toowoomba, he married Emmie Gillam, a shop assistant.Īt the foundry Featherstone initiated a benevolent fund and started first-aid training under his father, gaining the St John Ambulance Association instructor’s certificate in 1939. An early member (1927) of the Toowoomba Art Society, he won prizes for his paintings at the Royal Adelaide Show and the Brisbane Exhibition. Tall and lanky, in his youth Featherstone had moderate local success at swimming, tennis and rifle-shooting and, learning to play the steel guitar, participated in two local entertainment groups, the Bohemian Club and the Merry Makers. He was self-employed until 1927, when he found work as a machinery painter at the Toowoomba Foundry. In 1924 he moved to a larger firm in Brisbane but, made redundant by the introduction of spray painting, returned to Toowoomba. He worked for a year as a boot delivery-boy before securing an apprenticeship as a coach-trimmer and signwriter in his uncle’s paint shop, where he was nicknamed `Don’ to avoid confusion with another apprentice. Educated at Harrowgate Hill School, Darlington, and Toowoomba East State School (1912-14), Sydney left aged 12. In 1911 the family migrated to Toowoomba, Queensland. Sydney (Don) Featherstone (1902-1984), ambulance officer and amateur cinematographer, was born on 16 November 1902 at Darlington, Durham, England, second of six sons of Joseph Featherstone, railway shunter and ambulanceman, and his wife Eliza Dorothy, née Moody.
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