The 1957 launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial spacecraft, named after the Russian word for satellite, by the Soviet Union was a major world event inaugurating the ‘Space Age’.
Such was the cultural impact of the launch that Lloyd Loom, the London maker of wicker furniture that became hugely popular in the 1920s, commemorated the event by creating a linen basket in the shape of the spacecraft in a limited edition. Only 100 are thought to have been produced.