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.
2010s Ukrainian Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
2010s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Zinc, Brass
2010s Belgian Post-Modern Furniture
Stone, Metal
Mid-20th Century Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Leather
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
1990s Post-Modern Furniture
Maple
1970s German Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Porcelain
2010s Spanish Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
Late 20th Century South African Post-Modern Furniture
Ceramic, Pottery
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Leather
1990s Swedish Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
2010s Mexican Post-Modern Furniture
Steel
1980s Canadian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Wood, Lacquer
1980s Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Slate, Metal
2010s Mexican Post-Modern Furniture
Bronze
Late 20th Century American Post-Modern Furniture
Wood, Laminate
2010s French Post-Modern Furniture
Aluminum
2010s Mexican Post-Modern Furniture
Oak, Plywood
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Glass
2010s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Glass
1980s Spanish Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Plastic
2010s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Glass
Mid-20th Century Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Metal, Wire
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Steel, Stainless Steel
2010s American Post-Modern Furniture
Lacquer, Hardwood
1990s Post-Modern Furniture
Upholstery, Ultrasuede, Wood
1980s Japanese Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Ceramic
2010s Spanish Post-Modern Furniture
Cotton
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
2010s French Post-Modern Furniture
Fabric, Beech
2010s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Wood
2010s Indian Post-Modern Furniture
Stainless Steel
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Aluminum
1980s German Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Chrome, Metal
2010s Turkish Post-Modern Furniture
Art Glass, Blown Glass
1990s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Blown Glass, Sommerso, Murano Glass
1970s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Ceramic
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Steel, Stainless Steel, Chrome
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Ceramic
1980s Japanese Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Porcelain
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Concrete
1970s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Glass, Oak
2010s American Post-Modern Furniture
Aluminum
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Composition
1990s French Post-Modern Furniture
Ceramic
2010s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Glass
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
2010s Ukrainian Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
2010s Indian Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
Early 2000s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Chrome
1990s Japanese Post-Modern Furniture
Plastic
2010s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Laminate, Wood
20th Century American Post-Modern Furniture
Lucite
1990s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
2010s French Post-Modern Furniture
Bronze
1990s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Wood
21st Century and Contemporary English Post-Modern Furniture
Oak
1990s Hong Kong Post-Modern Furniture
Crystal, Quartz, Metal
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Stainless Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Furniture
Oak
2010s Ukrainian Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
2010s Brazilian Post-Modern Furniture
Upholstery, Wood
1960s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Chrome
1970s Belgian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Aluminum, Steel
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
2010s Turkish Post-Modern Furniture
Marble
Late 20th Century American Post-Modern Furniture
Stone, Marble, Brass
Early 2000s Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Plastic
20th Century Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Chrome
Early 2000s Danish Post-Modern Furniture
Steel, Chrome
21st Century and Contemporary American Post-Modern Furniture
Brass