History
Galalith from the greek GALA (milk) and LITHOS (stone), is one of the oldest plastic materials. It was discovered in 1897 when two German researchers came up with the idea of solidifying milk casein by addition of a small amount of formaldehyde.
After 1900, it was used to manufacture fantasy buttons, toilet accessories, boxes, fountain pen etc...
Casein's pure white and extremely fine grain makes galalith an unbeatable material for dyeing in fine colors with a bright final polish.
Galalith is also manufactured mass dyed (in black for example). The inclusion of diverse additives produces various moire, striped... effects.
However this perfect material requires a long and complex process to carve the required shapes :
- after preliminary sanding of the raw material, each piece is hand cut (galalith cannot be moulded, and therefore is not a "plastic" material in the proper sense),
- the pieces are then polished for days in a rotating drum, then dyed and polished by hand, with the eventual addition of lacquer work, and finally some of them are hand painted by the artist.)