Design
Aluminum Christmas trees consisted of aluminum branches attached to a wooden or aluminum central pole. The central pole had holes drilled into at angles so when the aluminum foil branches were attached they formed a tree shape. The foil branches had woven aluminum "needles" as well. Each tree took about 15 minutes to assemble.
The first aluminum trees could not be illuminated in the manner traditional for natural Christmas trees or other artificial trees. Fire safety concerns prevented lights from being strung through the tree's branches; draping electric lights through an aluminum tree could cause a short circuit. The common method of illumination was a floor-based "color wheel" which was placed under the tree. The color wheel featured varyingly colored segments on a clear plastic wheel, when switched on the wheel rotated and a light shone through the clear plastic casting an array of colors throughout the tree's metallic branches. Sometimes this spectacle was enhanced by a rotating Christmas tree stand.
Aluminum Christmas trees have been variously described as futuristic or as cast in a style which evoked the glitter of the space age. A Money magazine article published on the CNN website in 2004 called the design of aluminum Christmas trees "clever". The same article asserted that once the trees overcame their cultural baggage, as icons of bad-taste, that aluminum Christmas trees were actually beautiful decor. The Space Age-feel of the trees made them especially suited to the streamlined home decor of the time period.
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Famous quotes containing the word design:
“Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“The reason American cars don’t sell anymore is that they have forgotten how to design the American Dream. What does it matter if you buy a car today or six months from now, because cars are not beautiful. That’s why the American auto industry is in trouble: no design, no desire.”
—Karl Lagerfeld (b. 1938)
“I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ’s sake not black—
nor white either—and not polished!
Let it be weathered—like a farm wagon—”
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)