Review: Shellac in Visual and Sonic Culture: Unsettled Matter, Elodie A. Roy

Shellac is a commercial resin made from lac, the secretions of the Laccifer lacca insect. The word comes from the Sanskrit word ‘lakh,’ which means 100,000 and refers to the vast swarms that cover host trees during brood season in India, where the substance has been harvested since the Vedic period (c. 1500–500 BC).1 Being the only naturally occurring thermoplastic, this is a material that had a multitude of uses through the first half of the twentieth century before synthetic alternatives became available. According to the American manufacturers Zinsser Co., shellac was used to make “shoe polish, felt sizing for men’s hats, hair spray, floor wax, pharmaceutical, candy and fruit coatings; printing inks, adhesives, grinding wheels, paper and foil coatings and electrical insulators.”2 It is presently an element in some popular nail varnishes and it is still what makes jelly beans shiny today. It was, for a while between the two world wars, also a major component in the production of gramophone records, and it is this latter fact that is really of interest to Elodie A. Roy in Shellac in Visual and Sonic History: Unsettled Matter.