Earl Tupper may have invented Tupperware in 1948, but it took the genius of a woman called Brownie Wise to come up with the innovative plan to sell the airtight containers in American homes. In 1951 the plastic homewares were removed from all stores, and the Tupperware party was born, as Colin Bisset writes.

The Tupperware party remains an enduring image of the 1950s.

Here, the hostess would display to her friends and neighbours a range of plastic containers that would keep food fresh. It's likely that everyone would buy at least one item. The fame of the Tupperware brand may indeed come from this clever marketing strategy but the product itself is an interesting staging post in the history of design.

Launched in America by Earl Tupper in 1948, the new containers were the result of his focus on the potential of a new, flexible plastic called polyethylene, a departure from the first plastics which were hard and often brittle. He trademarked a fitted top for the moulded containers that, when pushed down to engage the groove of the lid with the tongue of the container, gave an airtight closure, something which is often called a burp closure after the sound given by the expelled air.

The containers themselves were made in a variety of colours giving the range a look that was bang up-to-date but which could be easily changed to accommodate future changes in colour fashion.

The importance of Tupperware parties cannot be understated. It meant that married or pregnant woman, who were not normally allowed to work, could host a Tupperware party and earn money.

It took a woman called Brownie Wise, however, to establish the innovative way of selling. The idea of mail-order had become a staple of American life since the success of the catalogue-ready Chicago-based Sears company in the 1880s. The Larkin Soap Company had pioneered the idea of hosted parties where items were sold amongst friends and family (the forward-thinking Larkin Company's headquarters in Buffalo, New York, were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1904, an important building in American architectural design history which was sadly demolished in 1950).

Brownie Wise updated the idea and caught Tupper's attention due to the success of her own hosted parties where she sold his product. This convinced Tupper that such a model of selling was sound and in 1951 the Tupperware range was removed from all stores, available thereafter only through direct selling.

By enrolling women to sell to their family and friends, the pressure and taint of direct marketing was avoided. Tupperware parties were seen as fun, social events, with the hostess earning money and receiving incentive gifts from the company if she was particularly successful. The idea suited the more casual mood of the time. Some have described these parties as the Facebook of the 1950s, bringing together people in a way that had previously been somewhat stilted or formal.

The importance of Tupperware parties cannot be understated. It meant that married or pregnant woman, who were not normally allowed to work, could host a Tupperware party and earn money. Although some now criticise the idea saying that the parties simply re-enforced the idea that a woman's place was in the home, it could also be said that the marketing was a clever way of giving woman a certain amount of independence without rocking the boat of masculine supremacy.

Although Brownie Wise was made Vice-President of the sales division of the Tupperware company in 1951, her relentless introduction of new party rituals and extravagant incentive rewards for the most successful Tupperware sales people was blamed for her removal from the company in 1958. The real reason appears to be Earl Tupper's desire to sell the company, which he did soon after her departure. (Wise set up her own company to sell cosmetics but it failed and she never enjoyed the success and fame that had come with her Tupperware position.)

Tupperware itself has survived, finding its way first to Britain in the 1960s and then the rest of the world, with its trademarked airtight seal giving it an upper hand among imitators. The product has evolved, of course, offering containers with more flexible lids, containers with vents for microwave cooking and even heat-resistant variants for oven-to-table use.

They remain a symbol of practical design and social engineering in one neat package.

Find out more at By Design.