Once upon a time, December 1980 to be exact, Italian architect-designer Ettore Sottsass had a little party to celebrate his plan to produce a new line of furniture. He invited several young design collaborators. A record was playing: Bob Dylan’s “Stuck Inside of Mobile (With the Memphis Blues Again).” When the vinyl platter kept catching on the word “Memphis,” a new design movement was christened. What punk was to music, Memphis was to design.
Sottsass and the members of the collective, including young architect Michele De Lucchi, broke through the “tyranny” of modernist taste by making furniture made from leopard print plastic laminate, celluloids, neon tubes and zinc-plated sheet-metals, jazzed up with spangles, glitter, and crazy color combos. Read the rest of this entry »
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