200words: Plywood at V&A

Walking round the plywood exhibition asking, “Why is ply hip?” Wherein and wherefore the wiring of the zeitgeist that has bubbled forth this vogue for succulents in terrariums perched on coffee bars made with ply?

Made.com sponsor the show, wedded as they are to crystalising the myth of ply. The mythology of simpler times, elemental materials shaped by chipper chippies in the first industrial revolution, for dreamy surfboarders riding a wave of mid-century optimism. Things were good back then. Oh to be Post-war perennially, swinging home with the swagger of the sixities, all tongue and groovy with military derivatives into domestic contexts, a sailor home on leave. I'll make you a chair to remember me by, bent gymastically, a mandala warp, a mobius loop..

Ply, a synthetic and compound material, ever an allegory for modernity's pliable masses,  the chips and splinters of empire pressed into a mould.

Ply, a precarious material, ever an allegory for modernity's fragile self. Halfway between cardboard and CLT, ever a prototype for something else. It's fairface scratched by a careless mover, and in tearing the veneer, one shatters the whole.

Ply, a weaponised material, then, as now, the robots take over and nature is bent to concentrate wealth and slicken our future.

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