Fordlandia was created by Henry Ford in 1928 to cultivate and process rubber in the Amazon Rainforest. Over 5,000 square miles of forest was cleared for the cultivation of a rubber plantation however without the bio diversity of the forest environment the trees were ravaged by pests and blighted by disease.

Ford wanted to bring an American ideal town to the tropics, he constructed rows of neat American style weatherboarded houses with a school, a hospital, railway and a dance hall where they conducted weekly square dances. The workers were put on a strict diet and worked from the hours of 9-5. It became more than just a quest for rubber but it had become a social and cultural experiment.

After 6 years of failed crops and dispirited workers, the town was abandoned and the land sold back to the Brazilian Government. What is left behind is a time capsule of 1930’s industrial Midwest town overgrown with tropical flora.

The rubber tapper starts at 4am to avoid trekking through the forest during the hottest part of the day. He walks for six hours through forest trails visiting over 100 trees in which he cuts away a small channel of bark. The latex flows into a cup for up to six hours after which the tapper returns to collect it into a pail before it coagulates. Each tree produces around five litres of latex a year. The rubber tree Hevea brasiliensis is native to the Amazon, where they grow wild and can be tapped without harm. A kilo of latex is worth more than a kilo of beef. Buying wild rubber is one way to find value in the forest remaining wild and untouched.

Ebonite is a very hard material made of natural rubber, sulphur and linseed oil. Its name comes from its intended use as an artificial substitute for ebony wood and was widely used before the invention of bakelite. Due to its durability and lustre ebonite is a ideal alternative to the tropical hardwoods which were used traditionally in Brazilian modernist furniture.