With the increasing use of plastics and the decorating trend to "go pink", a delightful piece of Americana -- pink flamingo lawn ornaments -- were first hatched by Don Featherstone, in 1957.  Featherstone was hired by Union Products, of Leominster, Massachusetts, to carve three-dimensional versions of two of their best selling products -- the duck and the flamingo.  These sculptures were to be used in their new product line of plastic lawn ornaments, expanding their products from simply two-dimensional creations to more lifelike versions.

Bringing the two-dimensional yard decorations to three-dimensional life required models for Featherstone to sculpt from.  While he had a live duck to model his new duck sculpture from, there were no pink flamingos readily available to act as a model, in the cold state of Massachusetts.  Instead, Featherstone went with the next best thing -- highly detailed phtographs.  He turned to National Geographic and their beautiful nature photos of flamingos out in the wild to sculpt what would become one of most recognizeable pieces of pop culture today.

Working with clay, Featherstone made the first sculpture that would eventually become the pink flamingo lawn ornament we still all know and love fifty years later.  A plaster cast was taken of the clay sculpture and this, in turn, was used to make the molds for the final manufacturered pieces of plastic.  Originally, the company had designed in wooden legs that would be carefully detailed to look like the real thing.  However, these detailed legs were too expensive to manufacture and instead the familiar metal legs, that still available today, were used instead.