An investigation into a mythical material.

Ian Holdsworth and Ibrahim Faraj.

Try this. Search eBay for Bakelite and choose the option ‘Sort: Price: Highest first’. Scroll down through the Rolex bezels and Fada radios and soon you will come to some red prayer or worry beads catalogued as made of Faturan. Writing today the price of the most expensive is £3,837, and they have been known to sell for £20,000 plus. Why would some plastic beads be so valuable?

Faturan, so Wikipedia tells us, was invented by Friedrich Adolf "Fritz" Traun, a talented academic and sportsman, (and noted playboy), born in Wandsbeck, Germany in 1876. The material is, allegedly, an anagram of his name, F. A. Traun. He studied chemistry at Dresden University of Technology and whilst there participated in the 1896 Athens Olympic Games running in the 800 meters and playing in the singles and doubles tennis championship, which he won with his British partner John Pius Boland. Traun gained his PhD in 1899 and then spent two years working at the Sorbonne in Paris, after which he went to work in his father’s natural rubber manufacturing company. This company was Traun & Son who amongst other activities were moulders of vulcanite. The Trade Marks Journal for 1877 lists, ‘Heinrich Traun of Hamburg, on behalf of Self & Partners, Heinrich Christian Meyer, Otto Traun, Max Traun trading as H. C. Meyer Junr. and as Hamburg India Rubber Comb Company at Hamburg, manufacturers’.

In 1902, after a visit to America, Traun fell ill with tuberculosis and spent the following years at health spas in the Alps. During this time he worked as a sports journalist and director of the German Tennis Championships. He married Friedel Preetorius, the daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur in 1907 and lived with her at the exclusive Park Hotel Teufelsbrucke in Hamburg. In July 1908 a woman entered the hotel and asked to speak to Traun. She claimed he was a bigamist as he was already married to her, and that they had children. After this conversation Traun went back to his hotel suite bathroom, locked the door and shot himself. The woman was never traced.

 

 

 

Friedrich Adolf "Fritz" Traun photographed in 1907

 

 

 

Traun’s short and somewhat eventful life does not seem to leave much time for materials invention. More so perhaps as the chemistry and production of phenolic resin was not demonstrated commercially until Baekeland’s patents of 1907. It seems unlikely that his PhD work dealt with phenolics, predating as it would Baekeland by a decade, or the time he spent at the Sorbonne. There is no documented French interest in phenolics at this date. The one year he spent in his father’s company he presumably spent dealing with rubber. So how did Traun become associated with Faturan?

Faturan is described, again on Wikipedia, as ‘a mixture of natural amber shavings with other materials’. This sounds very much like reconstituted amber, a technique much used to make, for example, amber cigarette holders in the 1920s. Furthermore it is described as ‘having been invented in the Middle East in the 18th or 19th century’. Did the bead makers really have a compression or injection moulding technological capability at this early date? More confusingly eBay states ‘The "legendary" definition of FATURAN (sometimes referred to as Amber Faturan) is as follows: " a mixture of natural amber, resins and incense. The technique of sticking together the shavings of amber together with a mixture of secret natural resins and incense to turn it into a solid material is unknown until today. This method was invented by an Arab named Faturan in the 19th century (some even go as far as the 17th century) and that material carried his name ever since". In fact the most famous reference for beads, the book titled: "The History of Beads From 30,000 BC To The Present ", by L.S. Dubin, does not mention the word Faturan, not even one single time! This clearly indicates that the word Faturan and its legend were simply invented some time after 1987, the date at which the above book was published’. Perhaps the writer has a point. Also from eBay –‘The bead carvers, mainly in Turkey, were swift to understand that Bakelite, (meaning cast phenolic resin) was a material that could be well carved, had a great appearance and could imitate and replace amber. (probably true). They started making their own material mixing it with dyes, natural, vegetal or synthetic, amber powder, various fillers and additives, etc.. Each master also had his secret "recipe", even heating in various liquids and oils and making it undergo various physical or chemical processes to obtain the most beautiful aspect.’ (probably not true).


 

Two strings of Faturan prayer beads.

 

Further into the Internet we find that - ‘Faturan amber is a semi-synthetic imitation amber, or "amberoid." Yellow, light orange, or butterscotch. Faturan amber is referred to as Misketa (allegedly a type of amberoid) or Misket (which is actually a type of Turkish dance!). Faturan amber was invented in the late 1700's by the Egyptian chemist Faturan, after whom that material was named. The first colors were a dark red or purple, but eventually there became more colors, such as yellow, orange, black, and the very rare green and blue. The main reason that Faturan was invented, along with all other amberoids and false ambers, is because of the rarity and high price of genuine amber; amber imitations have been made for hundreds of years. Also, the amber of the region in which Faturan resided was very fragile and broke easily both when being carved or when the carved item was used, such as prayer beads breaking when being played with. The exact composition of the material is unknown, but the believed ingredients include: powdered Kahraman (Arabic) amber and/or copal, Mastic resin, Frankincense incense, phenol resin (the main component of Bakelite), turpentine, and natural dyes (such as vegetable coloring and wine). The exact percentage of actual amber powder used in the process is not known; some scholars believe that no amber powder was used at all, and that this rumor was started by Faturan himself to promote his new invention.’ It is interesting to note that an 18th century Egyptian chemist had access to phenol resin!

Cast phenolics seem to have found their way into the Middle East in the form of ‘furniture door handles’ in about 1910. Seeing these, bead carvers evidently realized the material’s potential and have been carving beads from it ever since. Production of Faturan, we are told, ended at the start of WW2. The ‘last genuine Faturan beads date of the late 1940s when the supply of the raw material that was still left from the prewar stocks was terminated’ (sic).

Faturan, as a material, displays an extreme example of a characteristic common to most phenolic cast resins - it suffers from surface oxidization. Most phenolic will, over time, oxidize to a darker form of its original colour, but Faturan has the unique characteristic of, regardless of the original colour, always oxidizing to a dark red. This red colour caused the material, in the Middle East, to become known as ‘cherry amber’. If the red surface oxidization is removed the original colour of the material is exposed underneath.

 

 

 

 

Oxidization means this car gear stick knob appears to be a dark cherry colour. However, cut into segments the true colour of the material is revealed as green with a translucent yellow top.


 

 

Due to oxidation over time even water clear Faturan turns cherry red.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most widely known type of Faturan is called Marbled, Swirled, or Damar. The swirls show the combination of more than one type of Faturan being mixed and combined, for example, transparent mixed with a dark colour.

 

 

 

 

The properties found inside Faturan determine its desirability and value. The most obvious being gold, in the forms of leaf, dust or metal, reputedly added when molten. This rod is made of Faturan containing gold leaf.

 

  

 

 

 

Faturan containing gold dust.

 

 

 

 

 

A slab of Faturan containing gold dust and a parasol handle made of the same material.

 

 

The most sought after Faturan and most expensive is called Gold Flow, not to be confused with guanine crystals that give a glitter and shine in some Celluloid products. Gold Flow Faturan is a very rare mixture that involved a complicated and costly method of preparing a combination of melted gold and Faturan.

 

Gold Flow Faturan.


A Faturan walking stick handle in the shape of a parrot. Where the stick has protected the base the material has not oxidized and the original colours, including gold, can be seen.

 

 

 

 

 

Out of all this information and misinformation what facts do we actually have about Faturan and its link to Traun? ‘Depending on who you believe, Faturan was either invented by a German in Hamburg about the same time Dr. Baekeland developed Bakelite, (Dr. H. Traun), or it was a Middle Eastern mixture of amber shavings with ‘other matierals’ (sic) invented sometime between 1700 – 1900 by an Egyptian. We propose that it is not the ‘Middle Eastern mixture’ but much more definitely the ‘German in Hamburg’.

A literature search has thrown up few references to Faturan. In the German Jahresberichte über die Leistungen der chemischen Technologie, Band 62, (Annual reports on the achievements of Chemical Technology, Volume 62) published in 1917, Faturan is listed as a ‘new hard rubber replacement manufactured by Dr. Heinr. Traun & Sohne Hamburg, a phenol formaldehyde condensation product which is particularly used as an insulating material’.  In the Enzyklopadie der technischen Chemie, Band 7 (Encyclopaedia of the Chemical Industry, Volume 7) of 1931, an entry reads ‘Faturan - Dr. Heinrich Traun & Söhne, Hainburg, (should Hainburg read Hamburg?). Traun and Son seem to have had London agents called Winter and Almenraeder, at 48 and 49, Great Button Street, London, E.C.1. Described as ‘importers of Vulcanite, &c., successors of H.Traun and Sons, 25, Goswell Road, London, E.C.1, Manufacturers of Ebonite’. The London Gazette of August 30th 1918 states both companies were ordered to be wound up under the Trading With The Enemy Amendment Act, 1918. The British Plastics Yearbook for 1947 lists Faturan as a ‘German phenol formaldehyde moulding powder’. As the material is not listed in any later Yearbooks we can probably state that the production dates for the material in Germany were approximately 1917 to 1947.

So it could be that, nearly a decade after Friedrich Traun’s scandalous and untimely death, the Traun & Son Company purchased a license from Bakelite Gesellschaft to manufacture phenolic resin moulding powders in their Hamburg factory. Needing a trade name for their product they, perhaps, decided to remember Friedrich by making an anagram of his name. The company must have produced solid cast resin in rod and slab form to be used for electrical insulation, and this material made its way to the Middle Eastern bead makers. But as Dubin fails to mention Faturan in his definitive book it would appear that actually describing beads as made of Faturan is a fairly recent thing, (being known prior to this as ‘cherry amber’). In fact it has only been in the past five years that they have appeared on the Internet classified as Faturan, with a commensurate steep hike in value. Perhaps, coincidental to this, Faturan sounded just too Middle Eastern for the myth of the Arab chemist and his concoction not to get invented. Putting the material’s origin back a couple of hundred years and talking of secret and now forgotten recipes can only add value.

But the truth is Faturan is cast phenolic resin, a nice material for use in product design, and, in the case of old Faturan, a rare one. But it is Bakelite by another name. However, it is a truism to say that an object is worth what someone will pay for it. In the case of Faturan the material is not intrinsically valuable, (except where it contains inclusions), but is deemed valuable by those who sell and collect it through, presumably, the added value of the skill of the bead maker. Which is acceptable as long as the buyer is not being misinformed.

Modern Faturan, in the form of cast phenolic rods, sheet and tube is made and marketed by Raschig Co. Ltd., in Thailand, the company and trademark being owned by a Thai holding company. They advertise their phenolic materials as being of ‘German quality’.

Thanks to the following people for their help with this article – Colin Williamson, Reindert Groot from the Amsterdam Bakelite Collection and Kay Meiners from Sintetica.