Post-Modern Decorative Objects
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.
Mid-20th Century Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Blown Glass, Murano Glass
1980s Austrian Vintage Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Ceramic, Pottery
1970s American Vintage Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Blown Glass, Art Glass
1980s Japanese Vintage Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Ceramic
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Murano Glass
1980s Vintage Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Brass
1990s European Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Glass
Early 2000s French Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Porcelain
1970s Swedish Vintage Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Stoneware
21st Century and Contemporary German Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Porcelain
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Metal
1970s Danish Vintage Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Stoneware
2010s Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Glass, Oak
21st Century and Contemporary Brazilian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Ceramic, Stoneware
1990s Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Murano Glass
Late 20th Century American Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Lucite
Late 20th Century Romanian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Art Glass
2010s German Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Porcelain
20th Century Norwegian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Glass, Art Glass
1970s American Vintage Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Bronze, Steel
2010s American Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Resin, Plaster
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Bronze
Early 2000s Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Marble
1990s Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Bronze
Mid-20th Century American Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Enamel, Copper, Metal
20th Century Japanese Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Ceramic
2010s Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Glass
2010s Chinese Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Wood
1970s French Vintage Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Steel
Late 20th Century Philippine Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Marble, Stone, Brass
20th Century American Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Walnut
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Bronze
2010s Finnish Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Birch, Plywood
2010s American Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Steel, Stainless Steel
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Earthenware
2010s Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Glass
2010s American Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Brass
Late 20th Century American Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Copper
Mid-20th Century Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Ceramic
1970s Swedish Vintage Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Brass
1970s Swedish Vintage Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Pine
1990s Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Murano Glass
2010s Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Marble
2010s Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Marble
Mid-20th Century Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Plastic, Rubber
2010s Mexican Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Alabaster
21st Century and Contemporary American Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Brass
Late 20th Century American Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Art Glass
2010s Spanish Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Stainless Steel, Other
2010s American Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Resin, Plaster
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Plexiglass
2010s Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Murano Glass
2010s Greek Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Marble
2010s Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Glass
1970s Danish Vintage Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Stoneware
2010s Spanish Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Clay
2010s Australian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Aluminum, Brass, Bronze
2010s Italian Post-Modern Decorative Objects
Murano Glass