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.
Early 20th Century American Post-Modern Furniture
Terracotta
Early 20th Century American Post-Modern Furniture
Leather
Early 20th Century North American Post-Modern Furniture
Glass, Plaster
Early 20th Century North American Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
1920s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Murano Glass
Early 20th Century Belgian Post-Modern Furniture
Art Glass
Early 20th Century Japanese Post-Modern Furniture
Sterling Silver, Bronze
Early 20th Century American Post-Modern Furniture
Marble
Early 20th Century American Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
Early 20th Century Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
Early 20th Century French Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
Late 20th Century American Post-Modern Furniture
Hardwood, Velvet
21st Century and Contemporary American Post-Modern Furniture
Upholstery
1990s American Post-Modern Furniture
Fabric
2010s American Post-Modern Furniture
Ultrasuede
Early 2000s American Post-Modern Furniture
Leather
2010s American Post-Modern Furniture
Parchment Paper
Early 2000s American Post-Modern Furniture
Bouclé
1970s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Velvet
Early 20th Century Spanish Post-Modern Furniture
Stone
Early 2000s American Post-Modern Furniture
Suede
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Fabric
21st Century and Contemporary American Post-Modern Furniture
Linen, Canvas, Paint
Early 20th Century French Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
1910s French Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Wood
Early 20th Century Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
Early 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Brass
Early 20th Century Central American Post-Modern Furniture
Metal, Chrome
1920s Austrian Vintage Post-Modern Furniture
Upholstery, Wood
Early 1900s Italian Antique Post-Modern Furniture
Rattan, Walnut, Wicker
Early 1900s Italian Antique Post-Modern Furniture
Walnut, Wicker, Rattan
Early 1900s Italian Antique Post-Modern Furniture
Metal
Early 1900s Danish Antique Post-Modern Furniture
Wool
Early 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Chrome
Early 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Furniture
Steel
