Much as with "Bauhaus", "Memphis" is all too often popularly reduced to a "style", something one can "recreate". As with "Bauhaus" that it is not only disingenuous, and erroneous, but hinders development of understandings of the (hi)story of design, understandings of the path taken to our contemporary design that are important for considerations on where we are and how best to progress. With the showcase Memphis: 40 Years of Kitsch and Elegance the Vitra Design Museum Gallery issue an
read more
Alongside the Chinese and Korean New Year celebrations one of the most popular observances in any given February is, arguably, the Feast Day of Saint Valentine on February 14th; St Valentine famously being the patron saint of greetings card manufacturers, lovers, but less famously, if just as importantly, also offering protection from the plague. Now while the misanthropes amongst you will query whether love and plague aren't synonyms, and a pox upon you for that; this February 14th we could
read more
"When I was very small, a little boy of five or six years old, I was certainly no infant prodigy, but I did do drawings with houses, with vases and flowers, with gypsy caravans, merry-go-rounds and cemeteries........"1 Thus began one of the more interesting design journeys of the twentieth century. Ettore Sottsass (Photo Barbara Radice, 1984 © and courtesy Studio Ettore Sottsass) Ettore Sottsass: From Architect to Designer Born In Innsbruck, Austria, on September 14th 1917 as the son of an
read moreIn our design calender post on the inaugural Memphis Exhibition in Milan we noted that although important for the development of design and architecture, the Memphis group was never that successful commercially. Which is not to say that Memphis furniture wasn't bought and used to furnish homes. According to Artemide co-founder Ernesto Gismondi, who also served as Managing Director of the Memphis trading company, there are, or at least were, two homes furnished exclusively with Memphis. And
read moreCelebrated as the salvation of design. Denounced as kitsch. Fresh & invigorating. Vain & hifalutin. A watershed in design history. A passing fad. There are few architecture and design movements that divided opinion quite as much as the works of the Italian group Memphis. Or indeed which continue to divide opinion more than thirty years after their emergence. Although officially launched with an exhibition at the Arc '74 gallery in Milan on Friday September 18th 1981 Memphis can trace its
read more
