21st Century by E.Sottsass Round Centerpiece in White and Pink Marble and Copper

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. He was a wild man of the Radical Design movement that swept Italy in the late 1960s and ’70s, rejecting rationalism and modernism in favor of ever-more outrageous imaginings in lighting and furniture such as mirrors, lamps, chairs and tables.

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. 

The Memphis Group 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 created innovative furnishings for the likes of Artemide, Knoll, Zanotta and Poltronova, where he reigned as artistic director for nearly two decades beginning in 1958. His 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 inspired and expressive in smaller, secondary furnishings such as lamps and chandeliers, and in table pieces and glassware that have playful and sculptural qualities.

Sottsass left the Memphis Group in 1985 in order to concentrate on the growth of Sottsass Associati, a design and architecture consultancy he cofounded in 1980. 

It was as an artist that 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.

Find Ettore Sottsass lighting, decorative objects and furniture for sale on 1stDibs.

With the establishment of Up & Up in 1969, marble takes on new forms and explores new applications becoming the favorite material of the greatest designers, who have transformed it into objects, furnishings, accessories, bathrooms, elegant cladding, refined inlays and exclusive workings for prestigious architectural projects. After a decade of development and growth, in 1979 Up & Up became UpGroup, a more complex reality that today stands out among the Italian excellence leaders in the production and processing of marble. The company resides in Tuscany, at the feet of the Apuan Alps, in a “middle” land between the blue sea and the whiteness of the extraordinary quarries of the Carrara area, in which Michelangelo came to personally choose the most unique and precious marbles to carry out his works. Over the long period, the company has developed important research projects on new processing technologies, taking a pioneering role towards innovative techniques that have contributed to the profound change in the roles and the way the designers work. Among these: laser cutting, a unique project developed in partnership with the CNR (National Research Council) and the universities of Pisa and Florence, thanks to which it was possible to cut and engrave the stone with extreme precision, up to a minimum thickness of 3 mm.