The Fourth Kingdom

They're not entirely wrong, at that. Bakelite was indeed the second (after celluloid) of a whole new range of materials. Even today, we see "plastics" as not quite fitting in the old three worlds.

My mother was an inveterate hunter of Bakelite jewelry from this period. In order to separate the fake modern reproductions from the real stuff, she showed me how: she would have a large blunt sewing needle that she would heat up with a cigarette lighter and apply the hot needle to an inconspicuous part of the item in question. If the resulting tiny wisp of smoke smelled like burning hair, you had a genuine Bakelite item.

@ KDP -- Sadly, they can now fake that. They make a pin-sized hole, assuming the customer would test in the same spot rather than risk further defacing the item, and paint the area with a chemical which produces the same thiols when burned. When the chemical is dry, it's invisible.

Kingdom shmingdom. They're all only atoms and molecules. We just mixes 'em up.