Shellac Records

Shellac records are made from the resin secreted by the female lac bug, on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. Until the advent of vinyl, most gramophone records were pressed from shellac compounds. From 1921 to 1928, 18,000 tons of shellac were used to create 260 million records for Europe. In the 1930s, it was estimated that half of all shellac was used for gramophone records. Use of shellac for records was common until the 1950s and continued into the 1970s in some non-Western countries.