Memphis Milano Style Chair
Vintage 1980s European Post-Modern Dining Room Chairs
Metal
Antique 1880s Belgian Mid-Century Modern Chairs
Steel
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Chairs
Metal
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Chairs
Fabric, Beech
Vintage 1980s Italian Mid-Century Modern Lounge Chairs
Stainless Steel, Chrome
Vintage 1980s American Post-Modern Chairs
Textile
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Chairs
Steel
Vintage 1980s American Post-Modern Chairs
Upholstery, Wood, Lacquer
Vintage 1980s Italian Mid-Century Modern Chairs
Steel
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Dining Room Chairs
Metal
21st Century and Contemporary Chairs
Metal
21st Century and Contemporary Chairs
Wood
Vintage 1960s Swedish Post-Modern Lounge Chairs
Metal
Late 20th Century German Post-Modern Desks and Writing Tables
Metal
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Chairs
Metal
Vintage 1980s Canadian Post-Modern Lounge Chairs
Upholstery
Vintage 1970s Mid-Century Modern Club Chairs
Chrome
Mid-20th Century French Post-Modern Chairs
Wood, Lacquer
1990s Post-Modern Sculptures
Metal
1980s Post-Modern Sculptures
Metal
Vintage 1980s French Post-Modern Side Tables
Steel
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Stools
Steel
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Stools
Steel
Vintage 1980s Post-Modern Armchairs
Steel
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Tables
Steel, Nickel
2010s American Post-Modern Floor Mirrors and Full-Length Mirrors
Mirror, Hardwood
1990s Post-Modern Sectional Sofas
Fabric
Vintage 1980s Italian Hollywood Regency Bookcases
Metal
People Also Browsed
21st Century and Contemporary Mexican Mid-Century Modern Table Lamps
Textile, Wood
21st Century and Contemporary Swedish Mid-Century Modern Table Lamps
Textile
21st Century and Contemporary American Mid-Century Modern Chandeliers an...
Brass
2010s American Modern Wall Lights and Sconces
Brass
2010s North American Modern Chandeliers and Pendants
Enamel, Nickel, Brass, Bronze
2010s South African Minimalist Pedestals
Hardwood
21st Century and Contemporary Portuguese Organic Modern Center Tables
Travertine
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Chairs
Metal
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Chairs
Metal, Chrome
Vintage 1970s Belgian Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Chairs
Stainless Steel
2010s Chinese Minimalist Benches
Velvet
21st Century and Contemporary Portuguese Modern Benches
Velvet, Wood, Ebony
2010s British Modern Wall Mirrors
Mirror
21st Century and Contemporary Portuguese Modern Benches
Fabric, Velvet, Lacquer, Wood
2010s American Minimalist Sofas
Wool, Wood, Textile
Mid-20th Century American Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Chairs
Oak, Plywood
Recent Sales
Vintage 1980s Italian Mid-Century Modern Chairs
Steel
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Dining Room Chairs
Metal
1990s American Post-Modern Dining Room Chairs
Metal
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Dining Room Chairs
Metal
Late 20th Century European Modern Chairs
Metal
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Dining Room Chairs
Metal
1990s Slovenian Post-Modern Dining Room Chairs
Metal
Vintage 1980s Austrian Post-Modern Dining Room Chairs
Wood, Burl
1990s Post-Modern Sculptures
Metal
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Sofas
Leather
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Armchairs
Leather
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Sofas
Leather
Mid-20th Century French Post-Modern Chairs
Wood, Lacquer
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Chairs
Upholstery, Wood, Lacquer
1990s Post-Modern Dining Room Chairs
Metal
1990s Post-Modern Dining Room Chairs
Metal
1990s Post-Modern Lounge Chairs
Ultrasuede
Late 20th Century Canadian Modern Chairs
Leather, Hardwood
1990s French Post-Modern Chairs
Lacquer
Vintage 1980s Canadian Post-Modern Lounge Chairs
Fabric, Hardwood
1990s Italian Post-Modern Lounge Chairs
Leather
Vintage 1970s Arts and Crafts Side Chairs
Bouclé, Hardwood
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Lounge Chairs
Hardwood, Leather, Bouclé
1990s Post-Modern Sculptures
Metal
Vintage 1980s Post-Modern Armchairs
Steel
1990s Italian Post-Modern Dining Room Chairs
Metal
21st Century and Contemporary Post-Modern Lounge Chairs
Steel
Late 20th Century American Post-Modern Chairs
Wool, Wood
Vintage 1980s Dutch Post-Modern Wall Lights and Sconces
Plywood
Vintage 1980s Dutch Post-Modern Wall Lights and Sconces
Plywood
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Dining Room Chairs
Metal
Vintage 1980s Dutch Post-Modern Wall Lights and Sconces
Plywood
Vintage 1980s Dutch Post-Modern Wall Lights and Sconces
Plywood
Memphis Milano Style Chair For Sale on 1stDibs
How Much is a Memphis Milano Style Chair?
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.