Post-Modern Club Chairs
Strictly speaking, postmodern design was a short-lived movement that manifested itself chiefly in Italy and the United States in the early 1980s. The characteristics of postmodern furniture and other postmodern objects included hot-colored, loud-patterned, usually plastic surfaces; strange proportions and weird angles; and a vague-at-best relationship between form and function.
Critics derided postmodern design as a grandstanding bid for attention and nothing of consequence. The fact that, decades later, postmodern design still has the power to provoke thoughts (along with other reactions) proves they were not entirely correct.
Postmodernism 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. In the next decade in Milan, a cohort of designers led by Ettore Sottsass and Alessandro Mendini brought the discussion to bear on design.
Sottsass and Michele de Lucchi, in 1980, gathered a core group of young designers, which would come to include Michael Graves, Marco Zanini, Shiro Kuramata and Matteo Thun, into a design collective they called Memphis. The Memphis Group saw design as a means of communication and they wanted it to shout. That it did: the first Memphis collection appeared in 1981 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. After the initial Memphis show caused an uproar, postmodern design quickly took off in America. The architect Robert Venturi had 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 collection of postmodern furniture includes seating, decorative objects, lighting fixtures and more.
1990s American Post-Modern Club Chairs
Aluminum
2010s Finnish Post-Modern Club Chairs
Oak
2010s Finnish Post-Modern Club Chairs
Birch, Plywood
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather, Wood, Down
20th Century French Post-Modern Club Chairs
Velvet, Walnut
21st Century and Contemporary American Post-Modern Club Chairs
Brass, Steel
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Bouclé, Wood
2010s French Post-Modern Club Chairs
Foam
2010s Finnish Post-Modern Club Chairs
Oak
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Fabric
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Brass
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Steel
2010s European Post-Modern Club Chairs
Velvet
2010s Spanish Post-Modern Club Chairs
Iron
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather
1990s American Post-Modern Club Chairs
Fabric
1970s European Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Velvet
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Club Chairs
Chrome
1970s Austrian Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather, Chenille
1980s Canadian Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather, Upholstery, Plastic
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Plastic
20th Century Italian Post-Modern Club Chairs
PVC
Late 20th Century Japanese Post-Modern Club Chairs
Steel
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Club Chairs
Chrome
Late 20th Century Belgian Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather
Late 20th Century North American Post-Modern Club Chairs
Suede
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Chrome
1970s American Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Wood, Bouclé
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Bouclé, Upholstery
Early 2000s American Post-Modern Club Chairs
Steel, Chrome
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather
2010s Thai Post-Modern Club Chairs
Brass
1980s European Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Fabric, Wood
1980s Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Metal
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather
Late 20th Century American Post-Modern Club Chairs
Fabric, Maple
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Fabric
1980s Dutch Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Metal
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Faux Leather
1980s Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Upholstery, Wood
2010s Spanish Post-Modern Club Chairs
Iron
2010s South African Post-Modern Club Chairs
Steel, Other
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Steel, Chrome
2010s Belgian Post-Modern Club Chairs
Bronze
1980s Dutch Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Fabric, Velvet
2010s Thai Post-Modern Club Chairs
Brass
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Silk, Birdseye Maple, Ebony
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Aluminum
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather, Upholstery, Oak
20th Century Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather
1970s Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather
Late 20th Century Belgian Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather
Late 20th Century Belgian Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather
2010s Italian Post-Modern Club Chairs
Chrome
1980s Austrian Vintage Post-Modern Club Chairs
Leather