Back to the Future

What do Elvis Presley, Stanley Kubrick and Ettore Sottsass have in common?

Beyond the iconic status they enjoy in their respective creative fields, they’ve all authored works that have been launched posthumously, serving to underpin further their cultural legacy.

In the case of Italian design maestro Sottsass – who went from designing aspirational typewriters, computers and other products in the postwar period for manufacturer Olivetti to co-founding the paradigm-shifting architecture and design collective Memphis in the early 1980s – his collaboration with global design brand Kartell over a decade ago sees the unveiling at this January’s imm cologne of its creative output: a small but perfectly crafted group of highly expressive, yet timeless, pieces.

Given postmodernism’s disruptive, playful impetus, which featured at its core the anything-goes plundering of any number of historical styles, creating at times a somewhat antagonistic mix-and-match aesthetic full of knowing quotations and ironic nods and winks, it was only a matter of time before Memphis, as the design lab par excellence of postmodernism, was itself picked out of the design-history dressing-up box and given new life.

Describing it as a ‘tribute to Memphis’, one which coincides with a general renewed appreciation of just how influential the movement was in terms of its challenging of modernism’s long and international hegemonic reign, Kartell have put into production three completely new Sottsass designs – the Pilastro and Colonna stools and the Calice vase, whose forms and colours speak of the heady heights of postmodernism’s popular, emphatically ludic design language.

‘We’re offering our own “industrial” interpretation of both Ettore Sottsass and Memphis today with this new collection,’ explains Kartell CEO Claudio Luti, ‘and we hope that this will have a very long life ahead. Sottsass and Memphis have a relevance beyond transitory trends. Sottsass will always be remembered as a creative who revolutionised design and Memphis, his creature as it were, for elevating design beyond the functional into the realm of the artwork.’ Think of Sottsass’s totemic Carlton bookcase from 1981, with all its brazen geometry and superficiality, and you know what the man is saying.

Visitors to this year’s edition of the imm cologne fair – which, heading up the spring trade-fair season, sets the tone and outlines the trends for the year ahead – are in for something special if they head over to the Kartell’s flagship store at Hahnenstrasse 11. (Post-Cologne, the show will move onto the Kartell store in Paris for Maison&Objet and the one in Stockholm for the Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair. See below for details.) Alongside the new Sottsass accessories, with their modular-like forms and bold playfulness, they’ll be able to see a whole capsule collection of over 50 designs – a range of some of Kartell’s most celebrated pieces that have been given the Memphis treatment, all presented in a specially designed exhibition by long-time Kartell collaborator, architect and designer Ferruccio Laviani. Patricia Urquiola’s Foliage armchairs and sofas, Piero Lissoni’s Trix modular seating system, as well as his Pop Duo and Plastic Duo sofas and Audrey chair, together with Philippe Starck’s Mademoiselle chair have – in true Memphis fashion – been given an audacious twist in terms of decorative surface. Strikingly graphic fabrics, specially designed by Ettore Sottass and Nathalie du Pasquier, have been used to remix the various furniture designs, creating an authentic body of designs that speak of unapologetic artistic expression while proudly bearing the stamp of industrial production.

Alongside its impressive and ongoing global expansion over the past few years, Kartell has made major inroads into the contract market, and Luti sees the ‘Kartell goes Sottsass – a tribute to Memphis’ collection as being as relevant to architects and planners looking to specify characterful, beautifully finished products for their projects as it will be to consumers. ‘Because of its strong identity, its glamour, the energy expressed both by the stools/vases collection and by the soft seating covered with Memphis fabrics. What makes this collection unique is its diversity within consistency: all the pieces together, mixed up, compose an original picture where different styles live together. The collection is a tribute to design as dialogue between creative approaches.’

With Kartell centre-stage in this current revival of all things Memphis, an obvious question is why the ten-year hiatus between Sottsass and the Italian brand’s initial coming-together? (Sottsass died in 2007.) It’s a question of technological catch-up, explains Luti. And, as you’d expect from a company of Kartell’s commercial calibre, a good deal of market shrewdness. ‘We worked with Sottsass from 2004 to 2005, but decided not to produce the projects as we weren’t 100% ready back then with the technology. And commercially speaking, we were more committed to integrating other product categories.’

With Sottsass’s later work, in particular his designs from the Memphis era, being concerned with the idea of the one-off piece or the limited edition, his involvement with Kartell was always going to be a kind of return, if you will, to true industrial design. Even more reason for the company to get it right, ensuring their self-imposed and exacting technical and production standards were met. ‘The Sottsass stools and vase are very sophisticated,’ explains Luti. ‘It took a long time and many trials to obtain a glossy, shiny effect of the plastic material, as if it were ceramic. As for the soft-seating ranges, we undertook significant colour and trim research to find the perfect patterns. A different kind of challenge, but great a fascinating process, involving different creative teams. But we got there.’

As Elvis would say, ‘It’s now or never…’

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