Celluloid .
An American printer and amateur inventor named John Wesley Hyatt was the first to produce this forerunner to bakelite and modern plastics
Hyatt was something of an industrial genius who understood what could be done with such a shapeable, or "plastic," material, and proceeded to design much of the basic industrial machinery needed to produce good-quality plastic materials in quantity. Since cellulose was the main constituent used in the synthesis of his new material, Hyatt named it "celluloid." It was introduced in 1863.
One of the first products was dental pieces. Sets of false teeth built around celluloid proved cheaper than existing rubber dentures. However, celluloid dentures tended to soften when hot, making tea drinking tricky, and the camphor taste tended to be difficult to suppress.
Celluloid's real breakthrough products were waterproof shirt collars, cuffs, and the false shirt fronts known as "dickies," whose unmanageable nature later became a stock joke in silent-movie comedies. They didn't wilt and didn't stain easily, and Hyatt sold them by trainloads. Corsets made with celluloid stays also proved popular, since perspiration didn't rust the stays, as it would if they had been made of metal.
Celluloid proved extremely versatile in its fields of application, providing a cheap and attractive replacement for ivory, tortoise-shell, and bone. Traditional products that had used these materials were much easier to fabricate with plastics. Some of the items made with cellulose in the 19th century were beautifully designed and implemented. For example, celluloid combs made to tie up the long tresses of hair fashionable at the time are now jewel-like museum pieces. Such pretty trinkets were no longer only for the rich.
Celluloid could also be used in entirely new applications. Hyatt figured out how to fabricate the material in a strip format for movie film. By the year 1900, movie film was a major market for celluloid.
However, celluloid still tended to yellow and crack over time, and it had another, more dangerous defect: it burned easily and spectacularly, unsurprising given that mixtures of nitric acid and cellulose are also used to synthesize smokeless powder.
Celluloid signs were seen through the first half of the 20 th century
Celluloid matchbox covers were also popular
Adtiques has a couple of nice advertising brushes on the old AA site (members collections )
Here are a couple of examples
Relics