Fevicol SH

Fevicol SH is a white woodworking glue: a thick synthetic resin adhesive, sold in white plastic tubs and buckets with a blue lid and a blue carrying handle. The label shows the brand's emblem, two elephants pulling in opposite directions against a single joint, above FEVICOL in blue capitals and SH in orange, with the words "synthetic resin adhesive". It is spread cold, straight from the tub, on wood, plywood, laminate, veneer and board, and the joint is held while it sets.

Its maker, Pidilite, began in 1954, when the brothers Balvant and Sushil Parekh made pigment emulsions for textile printing. In 1959 they produced a synthetic substitute for the animal glue that Indian carpenters had to melt before use, and called it Fevicol. It was, by the company's account, the only thing its single factory made. A proper plant followed at Kondivita, on the edge of Bombay, in 1963.

The Parekhs sold their glue to carpenters directly rather than through hardware shops, where competitors stocked theirs, and it was carpenters who decided which adhesive a job would use. In 1970 smaller packs and a 30-gram tube took the name into stationery pouches and office drawers, and from the 1990s the range grew into dozens of specialised adhesives. An undated print advertisement, showing a tub of Fevicol SH among a carpenter's saw, rule and nails, calls it "The Champion Adhesive for 30 years".

Today Fevicol SH is described by its maker as the largest-selling adhesive in India, and Fevicol has become the ordinary Indian word for white glue. The year on this page is the year of the first Fevicol. No source found dates the letters SH, so the identification of today's tub with the glue of 1959 rests on the maker's account of a single original woodworking adhesive, and on that advertisement, rather than on a dated record of the name.