Donald Featherstone is best known as the artist who designed the iconic pink flamingo lawn ornament produced by Union Products of Leominster, Massachusetts beginning in 1957. Featherstone grew up in Berlin, Massachusetts and graduated from the Worcester Art Museum's art school in 1957. The same year he began work at Union Products designing three-dimensional animals for lawn, holiday and other decorative uses.

Featherstone rose to become president of the company in 1996, and retired in 2000. In all, he sculpted over 750 different items for the company which produced them in thermoformed and blow-molded plastic. Today, many of Featherstone's designs are popular with collectors.

Union Products went out of business in late 2006, but the copyright and plastic molds of Featherstone's original plastic flamingos were purchased in 2007 by HMC International LLC, a subsidiary of Faster-Form Corporation. In 2010, Cado Manufacturing purchased the copyrights and the entire Union Products product line, including the pink flamingo, from HMC.

See:

Bregar, Bill. "Featherstone molds birds of play," Plastics News (May 27, 1996)

"Donald Featherstone (artist)," on Wikipedia (accessed May 18, 2012)

"Lawn A-Mercy! Don Featherstone Rules the Roost in Plastic Flamingos," People Weekly (May 19, 1986).

“Plastic flamingo," on Wikipedia (accessed May 18, 2012)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_flamingo