ETTORE SOTTSASS SIGNED MILAN MEMPHIS SILVER FAMOUS RARE DESIGN CANDLESTICK PAIR For Sale

MARKED ES SWID POWELL SILVERPLATEMEASURE 13 1/2" HIGH AND UP TO 3 1/16" WIDE.I WORKED IN MILAN FOR LA RINESCENTE DEPARTMENT STORES DOING PROTOTYPES FOR THE ENTIRE OF ITALY IN THE 1980'S AND I PURCHASED THESE IN MILANO IN 1983.
If you know the name ETTORE SOTTSASS, you’re likely to associate it withMEMPHIS—the design collective he spearheaded in the 1980s, which remains one of his most well-known achievements. But the true force of the designer’s character is much bigger than any single movement and was refined throughout various moments of his career. Sottsass was always motivated by a desire to reach deeper beneath the surface of the objects he designed, and to bring out their poetry.In December 1980, Memphis was born when a group of designers got together in Sottsass’s small Milan apartment. They had been listening to Bob Dylan records, and the group’s cheeky name is in part a reference to his song, “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again,” as well as the ancient capital of Egypt and the modern city in Tennessee. Though Sottsass has been considered the group’s leader, that is not a position Sottsass would have wanted to take on. “He detested any type of institution or hierarchy,” the designer’s widow, Barbara Radice, oncenoted. “He didn’t like anything that told you what to do. He believed everybody should find their own way of doing things.” From its debut at Milan’s 1981 Salone del Mobile, the movement generated sent ripples through the design community. In 1982 in New York, Sottsass organized the first stateside exhibition of Memphis, titled “Memphis at Midnight,” which opened to an eager crowd of over 3,000 people waiting to cram inside the Chelsea loft showroom where the works were displayed.

The Milan-based collective of designers—includingMICHELE DE LUCCHI, GEORGE SOWDEN AND NATHALIE DU PASQUIER—banded together to challenge the rationalist design principles they had been taught. They employed unexpected forms, bold colors, graphic patterns, and cheap materials—like plastic—to forge a new approach to design. If there was such a thing as a “Memphis style” it was characterized by an attitude more than anything else.

Sowden once said that the scope of Memphis “consists of broadening the area of style itself, of never being satisfied with what has already been done, and of looking for a new style all the time.” Though the work coming out of the designers’ studios was met with both repulsion and fascination—and was never a major commercial hit—its concepts and attitude ended up being a dominant force in the design world throughout the 1980s.

---