RWT Tulipan

Front side of a glossy orange rotary dial telephone.

Close up on the rotary dial of the telephone. The dial comprises of three parts: the orange center which has embossed white numbers from zero to nine, the actual plexiglass transparent dial with finger holes, the white but slightly yellowed plastic base with imprinted large black digits, and finally the metallic element in the shape resembling an arror, which blocks the finger from rotating the dial past a certain angle.

A close up of telephone's signal connection plug made from a white, but slightly yellowed plastic, four metallic bolts and one made of plastic.

An overview shot of the front-left side of the phone, with spiral receiver and connection cables nicely visible.

A close-up on the curved receiver. It has a grid of rectangular holes on its both ends, which expose the large metallic microphone and the speaker. From underneath the receiver, a plug pokes out.

A close up on telephone's plexiglass hook.

The telephone with unplugged receiver placed upside down with the details on its belly clearly visible.

Tulipan (“tulip” in Polish) was one of the most common rotary dial telephones of the People’s Polish Republic in 1980s. In fact, its modernized tone keyboard version was produced till 1995. It was available in fourteen different colors.

My family owned it when I was merely a kid and the rendered model represents the exact color of the device that we had. This particular orange reminds me of “bahama yellow”, which many of the cars of that period were colored with.

The model is a hero one. Medium-poly with unique textures. Rendered in Cycles only because I’m still waiting for the production ready Karma XPU.

If you’re interested in RWT telephones in particular, or in telephones from these years in general, then telesfor99’s page has plenty of fantastic resources, documents and photos about those devices. Don’t let the lack of HTTPS put you off.

Tools

Houdini NVil Substance Painter Blender (Cycles)

Rotary dial pulse telephone

Tools