Albert Henry "Woody" Woodfull (17 September 1912 – 24 June 2011) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

product design Product design is the process of creating new Product (business), products for businesses to sell to their customers. It involves the generation and development of ideas through a systematic process that leads to the creation of innovative products ...

er. Laying down many of the ground rules of

industrial design Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical Product (business), products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in adva ...

plastics Plastics are a wide range of synthetic or semisynthetic materials composed primarily of polymers. Their defining characteristic, plasticity, allows them to be molded, extruded, or pressed into a diverse range of solid forms. This adaptab ...

while heading British Industrial Plastics' Product Design Unit, his work had international influence. Woodfull was born in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

and trained as a

silversmith A silversmith is a metalworker who crafts objects from silver. The terms ''silversmith'' and ''goldsmith'' are not exact synonyms, as the techniques, training, history, and guilds are (or were, at least) largely the same but differed in that t ...

at the Vittoria Street School of Jewellery and Silversmithing before studying

at the

Birmingham School of Art The Birmingham School of Art was a municipal art school based in the centre of Birmingham, England. Although the organisation was absorbed by Birmingham Polytechnic in 1971 and is now part of Birmingham City University's Faculty of Arts, Design a ...

. In 1934 he was appointed to British Industrial Plastics (BIP) as a product designer at their

Streetly Streetly is an area in the county of West Midlands, England which lies around to the north of Birmingham City Centre. It is uniquely located within the borders of Birmingham, Lichfield and Walsall district authorities, and is part of the West ...

factory. His brief from the managing director was to "bring art to an artless industry", and his early work was largely in

packaging Packaging is the science, art and technology of enclosing or protecting products for distribution, storage, sale, and use. Packaging also refers to the process of designing, evaluating, and producing packages. Packaging can be described as a coo ...

, where designs such as his ''Ardath Cigarette Box'' of 1935 showed strong

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

influences and have become highly collectable. Beetleware jelly moulds

After

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

he produced notable promotional material for

Cadbury's Cadbury, formerly Cadbury's and Cadbury Schweppes, is a British multinational corporation, multinational confectionery company owned by Mondelez International (spun off from Kraft Foods, Inc., Kraft Foods) since 2010. It is the second-largest c ...

, but increasingly focussed on

tableware Tableware items are the dishware and utensils used for setting a table, serving food, and dining. The term includes cutlery, glassware, serving dishes, serving utensils, and other items used for practical as well as decorative purposes. The ...

, designing the classic '' Beetleware'' range in urea formaldehyde in 1946. Woodfull visited the United States in 1948 to investigate the newly developed

melamine formaldehyde Melamine resin or melamine formaldehyde (also shortened to melamine) is a resin with melamine rings terminated with multiple hydroxyl groups derived from formaldehyde. This thermosetting plastic material is made from melamine and formaldehyde. ...

material, whose greater water resistance was to lead it briefly to threaten

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcela ...

s as the dominant material in

. In 1951 Woodfull was appointed to head BIP's newly formed Product Design Unit, where he was to remain until his retirement in 1970. As well as developing designs for BIP itself, the unit's ''Design Advisory Service'' aimed to provide design consultancy to companies developing products in plastics, with the aim of improving the public's perception of the quality of plastic products and increasing demand for BIP's materials. As a result, Woodfull and the team he built up were responsible to some degree for most of the designs for tableware in melamine that developed in the 1950s and 1960s, including the ''Gaydon'' and ''Melaware'' ranges that are now recognised as being among the pinnacles of 1960s plastics design.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Woodfull, A. H. 1912 births 2011 deaths English industrial designers People from Birmingham, West Midlands Alumni of the Birmingham School of Art