Kodak Hawkette1930

History

Kodak Limited, the British subsidiary of Eastman Kodak, operated manufacturing facilities at Harrow in Middlesex and developed several camera models specifically for the British and Commonwealth market, sometimes diverging from the American product line in both design and materials. The Hawkette emerged around 1930 as part of this British product development effort, adopting Bakelite at a point when the material was becoming commercially viable for consumer goods -- radios, telephones, and kitchen items manufactured from Bakelite became widespread in Britain through the late 1920s.

The use of Bakelite in a camera body was not unique to Kodak -- German manufacturers were also experimenting with plastics in camera construction during the same period -- but the Hawkette represents an early and commercially successful application of the material in a mass-market box camera context. The rigid plastic body offered manufacturing consistency and moisture resistance advantages over the cardboard-and-leatherette construction of the standard Brownie line.

Specific production dates and the full range of Hawkette variants are not well documented in available sources. The camera appears in period British trade catalogues from the early 1930s and was likely produced through the mid-1930s before the market moved toward folding and more capable fixed-lens cameras.

Why It Matters

The Hawkette is historically interesting primarily as an early example of plastic camera bodies in mass production. Bakelite's properties -- rigid, machinable, electrically insulating, available in deep colors -- made it attractive for camera manufacturers looking to move away from cardboard and leatherette construction. Cameras like the Hawkette laid groundwork for the fully plastic consumer cameras that became standard in the postwar period and eventually for the all-plastic bodies of 1970s and 1980s point-and-shoot cameras.

The British manufacture is also notable: Kodak Limited at Harrow was a significant industrial facility whose output is less frequently catalogued than the American Kodak Rochester operation. Hawkette cameras represent a distinct strand of the Kodak story -- adapting the Brownie format for a British manufacturing context and a British consumer market with slightly different retail price points and distribution channels.

For contemporary collectors, the Hawkette is an approachable piece of early industrial design in a functional photographic instrument. The Bakelite body has held up well structurally compared to cardboard Brownies of similar vintage, and the cameras are generally in better condition than their age might suggest.

Sample Photographers / Notable Use

• The Hawkette was marketed in Britain as a companion to Kodak's existing 120-film consumable supply chain, targeting the same family snapshot market as the American Brownie line but through British retail channels.
• The camera appears in period British photography instruction books aimed at beginners and schoolchildren as an entry-level tool for learning film photography.
• British and Australian family photograph archives of the early 1930s contain a proportion of 6 x 9 cm negatives attributable to cameras of this class.

References

• Camera-Wiki: Kodak Hawkette -- body material notes and British manufacture context

Kodak Gold 200 is a daylight-balanced C-41 color negative film with warm color, moderate grain, and a classic consumer-film look.