Post-Modern Furniture
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.
1970s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Steel
1960s Swedish Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Aluminum
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Stainless Steel
1970s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Bronze
1990s European Post-Modern Furniture
Ceramic
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Resin
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Resin
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Resin
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Resin
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Resin
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Resin
Late 20th Century British Post-Modern Furniture
Ceramic
1970s French Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Metal, Aluminum
2010s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
1990s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
1970s French Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Steel
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Cypress
1960s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Bouclé, Plastic, Foam
1970s European Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Leather
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Fabric, Walnut
1970s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Brass, Steel, Chrome
2010s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Other
1970s European Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Fabric, Oak
1970s French Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Steel
2010s English Post-Modern Furniture
Resin
1980s German Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Plastic
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
1970s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Bronze
1990s American Post-Modern Furniture
Stainless Steel
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Chrome
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Leather, Wood, Lacquer
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
1960s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Bouclé, Plastic, Foam
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Wood
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Brass, Steel, Nickel
1990s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Acrylic
1970s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Velvet
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Linen
Late 20th Century American Post-Modern Furniture
Fabric
1970s Brazilian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Hardwood
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Wood, Walnut, Lacquer
2010s Australian Post-Modern Furniture
Bronze
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Iron
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Steel
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Fabric
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Fabric
2010s Danish Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
1960s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Fabric, Plastic, Foam
1970s Danish Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Steel, Chrome
1960s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Fiberglass
1980s French Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Velvet
2010s Chinese Post-Modern Furniture
Wood, Fabric
Post-modern furniture for sale on 1stDibs.
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