Post-Modern Side Tables
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.
2010s Dominican Post-Modern Side Tables
Onyx
2010s Polish Post-Modern Side Tables
Other, Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Side Tables
Crystal
2010s Thai Post-Modern Side Tables
Brass
2010s Danish Post-Modern Side Tables
Steel
2010s Italian Post-Modern Side Tables
Marble
2010s German Post-Modern Side Tables
Glass
2010s American Post-Modern Side Tables
Other
2010s Mexican Post-Modern Side Tables
Marble
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Side Tables
Metal
2010s Swiss Post-Modern Side Tables
Marble
2010s Spanish Post-Modern Side Tables
Concrete
2010s German Post-Modern Side Tables
Stone
2010s Swiss Post-Modern Side Tables
Marble
2010s German Post-Modern Side Tables
Aluminum
2010s German Post-Modern Side Tables
Steel
2010s Dutch Post-Modern Side Tables
Onyx
1980s Dutch Vintage Post-Modern Side Tables
Mirror
2010s Polish Post-Modern Side Tables
Steel
2010s German Post-Modern Side Tables
Brass, Steel
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Side Tables
Metal
1990s Italian Post-Modern Side Tables
Composition, Metal
2010s Finnish Post-Modern Side Tables
Wood, Ash
2010s Post-Modern Side Tables
Lacquer
2010s Thai Post-Modern Side Tables
Brass
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Side Tables
Travertine
2010s Pakistani Post-Modern Side Tables
Quartz, Travertine
2010s English Post-Modern Side Tables
Oak
2010s Spanish Post-Modern Side Tables
Concrete
2010s Korean Post-Modern Side Tables
Stainless Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Side Tables
Marble, Steel
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Side Tables
Steel
2010s Danish Post-Modern Side Tables
Marble, Steel
2010s Dutch Post-Modern Side Tables
Resin
2010s Polish Post-Modern Side Tables
Marble
2010s American Post-Modern Side Tables
Maple
21st Century and Contemporary English Post-Modern Side Tables
Ceramic, Glass
2010s Belgian Post-Modern Side Tables
Onyx
2010s Thai Post-Modern Side Tables
Brass
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Side Tables
Wood
2010s French Post-Modern Side Tables
Marble
2010s Post-Modern Side Tables
Lacquer
2010s Italian Post-Modern Side Tables
Marble
21st Century and Contemporary English Post-Modern Side Tables
Walnut
2010s American Post-Modern Side Tables
Brass
2010s Swiss Post-Modern Side Tables
Stainless Steel
1970s American Vintage Post-Modern Side Tables
Brass, Stainless Steel
2010s Pakistani Post-Modern Side Tables
Lapis Lazuli, Onyx, Marble
1970s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Side Tables
Marble
2010s British Post-Modern Side Tables
Marble
2010s German Post-Modern Side Tables
Ash
2010s Finnish Post-Modern Side Tables
Wood, Ash
1980s American Vintage Post-Modern Side Tables
Steel
2010s Finnish Post-Modern Side Tables
Wood, Ash
2010s Post-Modern Side Tables
Aluminum
2010s Mexican Post-Modern Side Tables
Stone
1980s Italian Vintage Post-Modern Side Tables
Marble
2010s Italian Post-Modern Side Tables
Marble