Post-Modern Bookcases
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.
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Bookcases
Marble
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Bookcases
Metal
2010s German Post-Modern Bookcases
Glass
2010s Swiss Post-Modern Bookcases
Steel
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Bookcases
Wood
2010s Finnish Post-Modern Bookcases
Plywood
2010s Italian Post-Modern Bookcases
Metal, Brass
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Bookcases
Travertine, Stainless Steel
2010s German Post-Modern Bookcases
Glass
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Bookcases
Walnut
2010s Saudi Arabian Post-Modern Bookcases
Metal
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Bookcases
Brass
2010s French Post-Modern Bookcases
Brass
2010s German Post-Modern Bookcases
Marble
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Bookcases
Metal
2010s German Post-Modern Bookcases
Glass
20th Century Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Wood
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Bookcases
Metal
1970s French Vintage Post-Modern Bookcases
Teak, Ebony
2010s Italian Post-Modern Bookcases
Metal, Brass
2010s Italian Post-Modern Bookcases
Marble, Bronze
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Bookcases
Iron
2010s Polish Post-Modern Bookcases
Steel
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Bookcases
Upholstery, Wood
Late 20th Century French Post-Modern Bookcases
Wood
2010s Italian Post-Modern Bookcases
Marble, Bronze
2010s Mexican Post-Modern Bookcases
Maple
2010s German Post-Modern Bookcases
Resin, Foam
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Bookcases
Laminate
2010s Italian Post-Modern Bookcases
Brass, Nickel
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Bookcases
Metal
2010s German Post-Modern Bookcases
Glass
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Post-Modern Bookcases
Laminate, Wood
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Bookcases
Plywood
2010s German Post-Modern Bookcases
Glass
2010s Belgian Post-Modern Bookcases
Clay
2010s Italian Post-Modern Bookcases
Marble, Bronze
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Bookcases
Metal
2010s British Post-Modern Bookcases
Mother-of-Pearl, Walnut
2010s Polish Post-Modern Bookcases
Oak
2010s Italian Post-Modern Bookcases
Iron
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Aluminum
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Aluminum
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Aluminum
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Aluminum
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Aluminum
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Bookcases
Steel