Mettsass Dining Table, Ettore Sottsass

About the Item

Mettsass dining table, Ettore Sottsass Dimensions: 110 x 110 x 73 H cm Materials: steel, glass The structure is of flat sheets of steel painted in red. The glass on the top is painted in the same colour as the structure. Irreverent, provocative, non-conformist, ground-breaking: a Postmodern master, are just some of the terms applied to Ettore Sottsass whose wildly innovative work has had an enormous influence on many contemporary artists. His association with the avant-garde Memphis Group is well known, but in fact, back in 1972 almost a decade before they formed he had forged a relationship with BD Barcelona, one of the first designers to work with the then, fledgling group. His Metsass table from 1972 looks as contemporary today as it did decades ago, his BD designs include the Knossos lamp and Manhattan ashtray and the notorious Shiva Vase, now in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Always experimental in his approach to form and colour, his work is truly iconic. Influenced by both ancient civilizations and contemporary culture, a man who looked to the future for inspiration and whose legacy is an integral part of the history of BD Barcelona. BDB

Creator:

Ettore Sottsass (Designer)

Dimensions:

Height: 28.75 in (73 cm)Width: 43.31 in (110 cm)Depth: 43.31 in (110 cm)

Style:

Modern (Of the Period)

Materials and Techniques:

Glass,Steel

Place of Origin:

Spain

Period:

2010-

Date of Manufacture:

2020

Production Type:

New & Custom(Current Production)

Estimated Production Time:

7-8 weeks

Condition:

Seller Location:

Geneve, CH

Reference Number:

Seller: BDB1stDibs: LU1219231964082

View Invoice

Shop All Ettore Sottsass

Ettore Sottsass

An architect, industrial designer, philosopher and provocateur, Ettore Sottsass led a revolution in the aesthetics and technology of modern design in the late 20th century.

Sottsass was the oldest member of the Memphis Group — a design collective, formed in Milan in 1980, whose irreverent, spirited members included Alessandro Mendini, Michele de Lucchi, Michael Graves and Shiro Kuramata. All had grown disillusioned by the staid, black-and-brown “corporatized” modernism that had become endemic in the 1970s. Memphis (the name stemmed from the title of a Bob Dylan song) countered with bold, brash, colorful, yet quirkily minimal designs for furniture, glassware, ceramics and metalwork. They mocked high-status by building furniture with inexpensive materials such as plastic laminates, decorated to resemble exotic finishes such as animal skins. Their work was both functional and — as intended — shocking. Even as it preceded the Memphis Group's formal launch, Sottsass's iconic Ultrafragola mirror — in its conspicuously curved plastic shell and radical pops of pink neon — embodies many of the collective's postmodern ideals.

Sottsass's most-recognized designs appeared in the first Memphis collection, issued in 1981 — notably the multihued, angular Carlton room divider and Casablanca bookcase. As pieces on 1stDibs demonstrate, however, Sottsass is at his most imaginative and expressive in smaller, secondary furnishings such as lamps and chandeliers, and in table pieces and glassware that have playful and sculptural qualities.

It was as an artist that Ettore Sottsass was celebrated in his life, in exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in 2006, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art a year later. Even then Sottsass’s work prompted critical debate. And for a man whose greatest pleasure was in astonishing, delighting and ruffling feathers, perhaps there was no greater accolade. That the work remains so revolutionary and bold — that it breaks with convention so sharply it will never be considered mainstream — is a testament to his genius.