“Fordite” refers to paint formations in relation to previous painting processes used at Ford plants. Alternative terms for the substance include “motor agate” and “Detroit agate”; however, given the significance of car production and the pioneering paint techniques, the pairing of Ford and -ite (a suffix normally applied to minerals).
The material looks like a rock or a mineral, but it is actually repeated layers of hardened paint. This reflects a vehicle painting practice, beginning during the 1930s and abandoned during the 1990s, when cars were hand sprayed. Today cars are now painted by way of an electrostatic process that magnetizes the enamels to car bodies.
According to a review of the history of car paints: “Thermoplastic acrylic resin technology dominated the automotive topcoat market in automotive coatings for about two decades, from the 1950s through the 1970s.”
This resulted in an attractive topcoat appearance. These began to be replaced with flat, plate-like metallic pigments during the 1970s, before the move to the electrostatic applications during the 1990s.
Because the color used in the spray booth changed according to different production schedules changed. As part of the paint application process, layers of the enamel paint gradually built-up on the tracks and skids (flat transport structures) upon which the car frames were painted. This was a consequence of the paint and the application method, where high-pressure downdraft solvent-borne acrylic or alkyd enamel paint delivery systems were used. Over time, the layers of over sprayed paint become hardened as car bodies enter ovens to cure the paint. Once the deposits of paint became think, Ford workers would remove the paint and discard it.
It takes a lot of paint to create a chunk of Fordite, about 997 layers of paint to build a one-inch-thick Fordite slag specimen.
While most of the remnants ended up buried deep in landfill, some people at the car plants would collect the odd piece and cure them and cut them just like gem rocks.
Following the economic crash in Detroit, more pieces of Fordite were recovered around the dilapidated factories. Since many pieces display complex, agate-like layers they became collectable items and some of the patterned, psychedelic-like material has been cut and polished to make jewelry, often sold on sites lie Etsy and Ebay. Prices can range up to several hundred dollars an item, depending on the condition of the piece and the attractiveness of the patterns.
As the fashion for car colors has changed, Fordite from different ears can reflect different color treatments. Generally, Fordite from the 1950s and 1960s is the most colorful, given the then fashion for cars painted with more garish colors. Whereas, older Fordite specimens contain rare colors like pastel yellow or sea-foam green. From the 1960s such colorful names were applied to the rich pallet of Ford vehicles, such as Grabber Blue or Plum Crazy purple.
In many ways, Fordite is a representation of the Anthropocene, term for the current epoch to represent how human have irreversibly changed the environment. Fordite is also a tangible piece of U.S. history that just accidentally dried in place (a sort of ‘modern fossil’), and one especially connected to Michigan, the ‘automotive state’.
