Ettore Sottsass designed a computer, a portable typewriter, ceramics, furniture faced in brightly coloured laminate, and houses. Born in 1917 and dying in 2007, he worked for more than sixty years, and almost every decade of his career belongs to a different register. For anyone interested in furniture, his name is tied first of all to Memphis, the Milan group he founded at the end of 1980. But Memphis comes late in his story, and it makes more sense in the light of what came before.
An architect's training
Ettore Sottsass was born on 14 September 1917 in Innsbruck. His father, Ettore Sottsass senior, was an architect, and the son in turn studied architecture at the Politecnico in Turin, graduating in 1939. After the war he settled in Milan and opened his own studio there.
In 1956 he spent time in New York and worked for a while in the office of George Nelson, then design director at Herman Miller. We have written a portrait of George Nelson. There he saw American industrial design, conceived for series production, at close range.
Olivetti: the machine as an object
In 1958 Olivetti took Sottsass on as a consultant to its electronics division, a collaboration that lasted more than twenty years. He designed the Elea 9003, one of the first Italian computers, which received the Compasso d'Oro in 1959. The work went beyond the casing: the task was to organise a machine that filled a whole room into modular cabinets, and to make it legible for the people who ran it.
The best-known object of the period is a humbler one. The Valentine, a red plastic portable typewriter designed with Perry A. King and launched in 1969, was conceived as something you carry about rather than as office equipment. It was made in large numbers and is still easy to find.
Poltronova, ceramics, the 1960s
In parallel, at the end of the 1950s, Sottsass became art director of Poltronova, a Tuscan furniture maker. There he designed, among other things, the Superbox series of tall wardrobes faced in printed laminate, from 1966, and then the Ultrafragola mirror in 1970, with its wavy frame lit from within.
A journey to India at the start of the 1960s left its mark. During that decade he produced several series of ceramics in which simple stacked forms and frank colours already point to the vocabulary he would develop later.
Memphis
At the end of the 1970s, Sottsass took part in the exhibitions of Studio Alchimia, of which Alessandro Mendini was a leading figure, and which questioned the place of decoration and symbol in design. In December 1980 he gathered a group of young designers at his home in Milan, among them Michele De Lucchi, Aldo Cibic, Matteo Thun, Marco Zanini and Martine Bedin. The group took its name from a Bob Dylan song that was playing that evening, Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.
The first collection was shown in Milan in September 1981. It included the Carlton bookcase, the Casablanca sideboard and the Tahiti lamp, all three by Sottsass. Many of the pieces were faced in decorative laminate, a material until then associated with kitchens and bars, and built up into volumes that read as signs rather than structures. The show provoked wide debate, and Memphis became one of the landmarks of postmodern design.
Sottsass left the group in 1985 to concentrate on Sottsass Associati, the practice he had founded in 1980. Memphis was dissolved in 1988. Sottsass went on building and designing until his death in Milan on 31 December 2007.
Buying a Sottsass piece today
The Sottsass market is broad, running from the mass-produced Valentine to Memphis pieces made in small numbers. A few points apply to almost all of it.
First, several of his designs were made again after their first edition, and some still are. The Ultrafragola is back in production at Poltronova, and pieces from the Memphis collection continue to be manufactured. An example from the 1980s and a recent one are not worth the same. To tell them apart, the original invoice, labels, provenance and wear consistent with the stated age count for more than general appearance.
Second, laminate ages in its own way. Edges chip at the corners, colours fade in the light, and a repair almost always shows at close quarters. Look at the edges, the undersides of tops and the points that touch the floor.
For lighting such as the Tahiti, allow for a check of the wiring. For ceramics, look for chips and restorations, which show up best in raking light.
At LAPIERRE MARKET
The Ettore Sottsass profile brings together his dates and main manufacturers. If you own a piece by him or from Memphis and would like it valued, the sell a piece page explains how to send us photographs.
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LAPIERRE MARKET
