Sybilla Mirror Unit, by Ettore Sottsass for Glas Italia

About the Item

Mirror unit with crystal mirror, two lamps and console table made of pearwood and Alpi veneer. The base is in anilinevarnished wood. Every piece is identified by a progressive numbering. Ettore Sottsass was born in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1917. He received his degree in architecture from the Turin Polytechnic in 1939. In 1947 he opened his own architecture and design office in Milan. Parallel to his professional work, he held solo shows of his paintings in Italy and abroad, participated in group art exhibitions and showed at several editions of the Milan Triennale. His collaboration with Olivetti began in 1958 and lasted for over thirty years, during which he received three Compasso d’Oro design awards. All throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, Sottsass’s work explored the themes that would stand central to his designs in the years to come: it was during this period that he laid the foundations for what would later be called Nuovo Design. In 1988, with Barbara Radice, Sottsass founded the magazine Terrazzo, in which the themes of Nuovo Design, explored by Memphis, were developed and extended to architecture and contemporary culture. Starting from 1985, Sottsass began focusing again on architecture. His works are in the permanent collections of a wide range of museums: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; MOMA, New York; Metropolitan Museum, New York; Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Montreal; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; National Museum, Stockholm. Additional information: - Dimensions: SYB W 160 - D 49 - H 198. Please note that the list price excludes VAT. An additional VAT charge may apply.

Creator:
Ettore Sottsass (Designer),Glas Italia (Manufacturer)
Dimensions:
Height: 77.96 in (198 cm)Width: 63 in (160 cm)Depth: 19.3 in (49 cm)
Style:
Modern (In the Style Of)
Materials and Techniques:
Mirror,Wood
Place of Origin:
Italy
Period:
21st Century
Date of Manufacture:
Contemporary
Production Type:
New & Custom(Current Production)
Estimated Production Time:
6-7 weeks
Condition:
Seller Location:
Macherio, IT
Reference Number:
Seller: SYB1stDibs: LU5155218543132

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.