Faux Real: Genuine Leather and Two Hundred Years of Inspired Fakes - Hardcover

Robert Kanigel

4.5

6 ratings by Goodreads

9780309102360: Faux Real: Genuine Leather and Two Hundred Years of Inspired Fakes

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0309102367 ISBN 13: 9780309102360

Publisher: Joseph Henry Press, 2007

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What makes genuine leather genuine? What makes real things ... real? In an age of virtual reality, veneers, synthetics, plastics, fakes, and knockoffs, it's hard to know.

Over the centuries, men and women have devoted enormous energy to making fake things seem real. As early as the 14th century, fabric was treated with special oils to make it resemble leather. In the 1870s came Leatherette, a new bookbinding material. The 20th century has given us Fabrikoid, Naugahyde, Corfam, and Ultrasuede. Each claims to transcend leather's limitations, to do better than nature itself--or at least to convince consumers that it has.

Perhaps more than any other natural material, leather stands for the authentic and the genuine; GENUINELEATHER, like a single German word, is how we think of it. Its animal roots etched in its pores and in the swirls of its grain, leather serves as cultural shorthand for the virtues of the real over the synthetic, the original over the copy, the luxurious over the shoddy and second-rate.

From formica, vinyl siding, and particle board to cubic zirconium, knockoff designer bags, and genetically altered foods, inspired fakes of every description fly the polyester pennant of a brave new man-made world. Each represents an often passionate journey of scientific, technical, and entrepreneurial innovation. Faux Real explores this borderland of the almost-real, the ersatz, and the fake, illuminating a centuries-old culture war between the authentic and the imitative.

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From the Author:

INSIGHTS and ASIDES FOOL ME ONCE. . . What drew you to this particular topic?

I wanted to explore this fascinating borderland between the natural and the artificial, but with a material whose sensual qualities are just as important as its more narrowly "functional" ones.

Finding a title for a book can be tough. What were some of the others you considered before settling on FAUX REAL?

Early on, I wanted to call it CROCODILE DREAMS. First, because "Mock Croc"--which is real leather, typically cowhide, embossed to look like crocodile skin--epitomized some of the peculiar paradoxes with which the book would deal. And second, for its suggestion of "crocodile tears," with its intimations of falsehood or insincerity, a central theme of the book.

And the "inspired fakes" of your book's subtitle? Where did you find them?

Everywhere. For three years, I incessantly rubbed, pinched, and scrutinized anything that resembled leather. Take me to a furniture dealer, a hotel lobby, a doctor's waiting room, a leather goods store, or a friend's living room, and I'd soon be running my hands over things, wondering: Real, or faux?

About the Author:

Robert Kanigel is the author of the critically acclaimed The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He also wrote Apprentice to Genius and The One Best Way, a biography of efficiency expert Frederick Winslow Taylor. Kanigel is a professor of science writing at MIT, where he directs its Graduate Program in Science Writing. He has been working with leather for more than 30 years.

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