2000s Pair of Goburam Vases by Ettore Sottsass

Name: 2000s Pair of Goburam Vases by Ettore Sottsass
Brand: Ettore Sottsass
Price: 52370.08 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Sottsass designed various objets for Venini, from 1988 and until the very last years of his life. The glass is blown and worked by hand by the master glassmaker in the Fornace Limited edition of 99 pieces. “Goburam by Ettore Sottsass speaks of India and of the monumental towers at the entrance of Hindu temples. It speaks of precious red coral and of the red soil of ancient faraway lands. It recalls the full moon night blue sky. All these elements blend together in the hands of the master glassblowers to create a work that reflects the whole wide world.” Creating glass objet is a very emotional experience: shapes and colors come to mind, inspired by near and faraway places, by a world that is halfway between fantasy and reality. A title that brings the image of a monumental Indian tower to mind, is a vase in hand-crafted blown glass in transparent nocturne and opaque coral red, made in a limited edition of ninety-nine. The chromatic contrast accentuates the different ways in which the two compositional elements have been worked.

Creator:

Ettore Sottsass (Designer)

Dimensions:

Height: 20.08 in (51 cm)Diameter: 13.39 in (34 cm)

Sold As:

Set of 2

Materials and Techniques:

Art Glass,Glass,Hand-Crafted

Period:

2000-2009

Date of Manufacture:

2001

Condition:

Seller Location:

Paris, FR

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU893725765142

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.