PLASTICENE.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13844, 4 March 1909, Page 6

PLASTICENE.

Mr Wm. Harbutt/ of Bath, the inventor and manufacturer of the familiar modelling material, plasticene, is nowmaking a tour of New Zealand witli his daughter, and they arrived at Timaru yesterday. They have been well received by. educational authorities wherever they have called, and were met at the railway station by Mr A. Bell, secretary to the Education Board. Last evening Mr and Miss Harbutt gave a demonstration of the uses of plasticene, in the Technical School, where seventy to eighty people, most of them teachers, spent over two hours in a very interesting way, watching the visitors manipulate the docile material, and listening to Mr Harbutt's explanations of the art of using it in primary education. Mr Harbutt considers this, an art quite distinct from modelling, and lie calls it " plastics." Listening to him and watching his deft fingers developing from three simple forms; — ball, biscuit and rone —that a child naturally makes, and proceeding step by step from simple to more complex modifications, the conviction grew upon one that Mr Harbutt had justified liis claim to have devised a valuable combination of hand, eve and brain exer- . cises for school children. It is not, he savs, intended to make artists, but artistic or at* least careful workmen, by educating the taste for symmetry and beauty of form Generally. He insisted too on the value of reproducing in brusliwork the results of work in plasticene. The demonstration and lecture were followed by a number of lantern views showing a great variety of simple and complicated designs that had been photographed for the purpose; "and some'more ambitious things in modelling. In proposing a. vote of thanks Messrs Valentine and Dalelish said that many valuable hints had been given to those who" were using plasticene in the schools, opening out new avenues of usefulness. In replv to a question by Mr Valentine; Mr Harbutt rnid that a little vaseline kneaded into it will, restore. disy and brittle plasticene to its original He mentioned too that the principal ingredient of the material, is. sulphur, about 80 per cent, of- it .lining this suiSstan"^—herce its n"ti=eptic properties. Mr and Miss Harbutt go on to Dunedin to-day.