Bitossi Home

Vase Projet Memphis - Spool Rocchetto ceramic / By Ettore Sottsass

Bitossi's Memphis Experience features ceramic pieces designed by the renowned Memphis collective between 1981 and 1988. Created by Ettore Sottsass, Nathalie Du Pasquier, and George Sowden, the pieces in this collection are true works of art, handmade in Italy.   This vase was designed by Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007). Founder of the Memphis Collective, Sottsass is globally renowned for being one of the greatest innovators in design and architecture of the latter half of the 20thth Century.   Founded in Milan in 1981 by Ettore Sottsass, the Memphis movement shook things up on the design scene, dividing it into two sides: Those who were for fans; and those who were naysayers. Drawing inspiration from the Italian anti-norm movements of the 1970s, the Memphis group united young architects and designers from around the globe, such as Michele De Lucchi, Matteo Thun, Martine Bedin, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Shiro Kuramata, and George J. Sowden… They were all driven by the same concept: Shaking up Italian design, which they considered to be excessively uniform, and releasing objects from their function.   In the early 1980s, at a time when functionality reigned and the tail-end of the Bauhaus era was still around, the collective blew up the norms and offered nothing short of a design revolution. The Memphis group protested against what had become a new bourgeoisie tradition, the modernist doctrine. A true cultural phenomenon, Memphis really shook up the design codes by voluntarily stepping outside of the lines of "good taste" of the time.  Up until that point, ornamentation was seen as a design "crime"… That is, until the Memphis movement put it back to the top of the agenda. Resolutely "post-modern", Memphis established a style built on bold colours, asymmetrical shapes, plastic laminates, and kitsch designs. Memphis creations were imbued with contemporary happenings on the streets, and also with modern art: The pop art created by Warhol and Basquiat, and Keith Haring's graffiti art. It was out with the pure, hard functionalism and austerity of the Bauhaus style, and in with fantasy through colourful and eccentric creations.   Their first collection was exhibited at the Arc'74 gallery in Milan on 18 September 1981, and it was a creative bombshell: a proliferation of exuberant patterns, explosive colours, intrepid asymmetries, geometric shapes stacked up like totems, new use of plastic laminate considered "cheap" until then… Soon, Memphis became THE subversive label of Italian design with its wacky, colourful world inspired by comics, Pop Art, cinema, Kitsch and Art Deco. It was a revolution: design, until then confined to the showrooms, invaded the media and inflamed passion. "Every single journalist seemed to be sworn to condemning our furniture in the name of good taste. Me? I think it is brilliant. It's Buckingham Palace which has bad taste. Memphis has its finger on the pulse of the real world, we're the speakers for the present and the future", declared the anti-conformist Sottsass. "It was a funny feeling.", reminisces English designer Jasper Morrison, "In one sense, we were repulsed by objects, but we were also immediately released by a kind of total transgression of the rules".   More than just a national shift, the Memphis group created an international shockwave which continued to ripple out until its dissolution in 1988: A brief yet intense adventure with energy and creativity that lost none of their fascination.

In detail:

• Variation : Spool Rocchetto

• Brand : Bitossi Home

• Designer : Ettore Sottsass

• Type : Vase

• Colour : Black - White

• Material : Hand-turned terracotta, two-tone glaze

• Dimensions : H 45 cm
• Weight : 3.3 lb
• Characteristics : Hand-crafted: Hand-turned
• Country of Manufacture : Italy