Memphis Bertrand
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Dry Bars
Steel, Chrome
Late 20th Century Post-Modern North and South American Rugs
Wool
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Early 2000s Swedish Mid-Century Modern Pillows and Throws
Cotton
2010s South African Modern Chairs
Steel
Antique Late 19th Century Italian Renaissance Revival Busts
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Vintage 1930s Czech Art Deco Lounge Chairs
Fabric, Beech
21st Century and Contemporary American Scandinavian Modern Wall Lights a...
Steel, Zinc
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern More Mirrors
Mirror, Plastic
2010s Carts and Bar Carts
Metal
Vintage 1960s American Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Sets
Metal
21st Century and Contemporary French Minimalist Benches
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Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vanities
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Vintage 1950s American Mid-Century Modern Screens and Room Dividers
Iron
Late 20th Century American French Provincial Wallpaper
Paper
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern More Carpets
Wool
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Tea Sets
Porcelain
Late 20th Century American Post-Modern Rocking Chairs
Steel
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Armchairs
Fiberglass
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Vintage 1980s Italian Futurist Cabinets
Chrome
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Desks
Metal
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Cabinets
Steel, Chrome
Vintage 1980s American Post-Modern Coffee and Cocktail Tables
Wood
Vintage 1980s American Post-Modern Coffee and Cocktail Tables
Wood
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Armchairs
Leather
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Sofas
Leather
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Sofas
Leather
1950s Modern Nude Photography
Silver Gelatin
A Close Look at post-modern Furniture
Postmodern design was a short-lived movement that manifested itself chiefly in Italy and the United States in the early 1980s. The characteristics of vintage postmodern furniture and other postmodern objects and decor for the home included loud-patterned, usually plastic surfaces; strange proportions, vibrant colors and weird angles; and a vague-at-best relationship between form and function.
ORIGINS OF POSTMODERN FURNITURE DESIGN
- Emerges during the 1960s; popularity explodes during the ’80s
- A reaction to prevailing conventions of modernism by mainly American architects
- Architect Robert Venturi critiques modern architecture in his Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966)
- Theorist Charles Jencks, who championed architecture filled with allusions and cultural references, writes The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977)
- Italian design collective the Memphis Group, also known as Memphis Milano, meets for the first time (1980)
- Memphis collective debuts more than 50 objects and furnishings at Salone del Milano (1981)
- Interest in style declines, minimalism gains steam
CHARACTERISTICS OF POSTMODERN FURNITURE DESIGN
- Dizzying graphic patterns and an emphasis on loud, off-the-wall colors
- Use of plastic and laminates, glass, metal and marble; lacquered and painted wood
- Unconventional proportions and abundant ornamentation
- Playful nods to Art Deco and Pop art
POSTMODERN FURNITURE DESIGNERS TO KNOW
- Ettore Sottsass
- Robert Venturi
- Alessandro Mendini
- Michele de Lucchi
- Michael Graves
- Nathalie du Pasquier
VINTAGE POSTMODERN FURNITURE ON 1STDIBS
Critics derided postmodern design as a grandstanding bid for attention and nothing of consequence. Decades later, the fact that postmodernism still has the power to provoke thoughts, along with other reactions, proves they were not entirely correct.
Postmodern design began as an architectural critique. Starting in the 1960s, a small cadre of mainly American architects began to argue that modernism, once high-minded and even noble in its goals, had become stale, stagnant and blandly corporate. Later, in Milan, a cohort of creators led by Ettore Sottsass and Alessandro Mendini — a onetime mentor to Sottsass and a key figure in the Italian Radical movement — brought the discussion to bear on design.
Sottsass, an industrial designer, philosopher and provocateur, gathered a core group of young designers into a collective in 1980 they called Memphis. Members of the Memphis Group, which would come to include Martine Bedin, Michael Graves, Marco Zanini, Shiro Kuramata, Michele de Lucchi and Matteo Thun, saw design as a means of communication, and they wanted it to shout. That it did: The first Memphis collection appeared in 1981 in Milan and broke all the modernist taboos, embracing irony, kitsch, wild ornamentation and bad taste.
Memphis works remain icons of postmodernism: the Sottsass Casablanca bookcase, with its leopard-print plastic veneer; de Lucchi’s First chair, which has been described as having the look of an electronics component; Martine Bedin’s Super lamp: a pull-toy puppy on a power-cord leash. Even though it preceded the Memphis Group’s formal launch, Sottsass’s iconic Ultrafragola mirror — in its conspicuously curved plastic shell with radical pops of pink neon — proves striking in any space and embodies many of the collective’s postmodern ideals.
After the initial Memphis show caused an uproar, the postmodern movement within furniture and interior design quickly took off in America. (Memphis fell out of fashion when the Reagan era gave way to cool 1990’s minimalism.) The architect Robert Venturi had by then already begun a series of plywood chairs for Knoll Inc., with beefy, exaggerated silhouettes of traditional styles such as Queen Anne and Chippendale. In 1982, the new firm Swid Powell enlisted a group of top American architects, including Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, Stanley Tigerman and Venturi to create postmodern tableware in silver, ceramic and glass.
On 1stDibs, the vintage postmodern furniture collection includes chairs, coffee tables, sofas, decorative objects, table lamps and more.
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