User:Chaiteaboba/Memphis Group

Designers

Being the founder of the group, Ettore Sottsass became the leader of the Memphis Group and is now one of the most well known Italian post-War designers.

Memphis furniture featured within a living room.

Martine Bedin, a French designer, was also a member of Memphis. She first joined the group when she was in her twenties and was deemed in charge of over-looking all Memphis lighting that was produced. Her father had been an engineer and she was also continuously 'playing with forbidden things', all which contributed to her designated position. During her time in Memphis, Bedin designed and thought of numerous ideas. Her design of the Super lamp placed on wheels, first designed in 1978, supposedly represented, along with a group of other objects, 'friend-like' items. Bedin's lamp was later produced in an artisanal workshop, where all Memphis products were manufactured, and her first prototype is now featured in the Victoria & Albert Museum, in London, England.

Peter Shire, a sculptor, designer and potter originally from California, was another figure who formed the Memphis Group. He was first discovered thanks to Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing, a lifestyle publication in the west coast that Sottsass' partner on occasion would contributed to. In one article featuring Shire's teapots in 1977, he quoted "I'm not much of a tea-drinker [...] Actually my first impulse is to put Coke in teapots. I'm a big Coke drinker and I'd love to see Coke flowing out of the teapots and foaming on the ground." His unique approach and attitude later secured him a spot as a member of Memphis.

After Memphis' disbandment in 1987, members went their separate ways. Some like Nathalie Du Pasquier, a French born ex-member of the group, have collaborated with brands and companies in recent years. In 2013, she and the Danish company HAY collaborated where she designed and created Memphis-esque patterned bags. She later on also collaborated with American Apparel, a Canadian-founded fashion company that moved to California, where she designed one of their collections.

The designs of the Memphis Group have acted as inspiration to many other fashion companies, like Dior and Missoni, who both were inspired to design fashion collections based on Memphis' original work.

Background

Ettore Sottsass, Creator of the Memphis Group

Memphis was born on the evening of December 11, 1980, when Ettore Sottsass invited a group of young designers and architects to discuss the future of design. Together, they wanted to change the concept of what design had been focused on, which had been been Modernism, and aimed to do so by creating and forming a new design collective. After their initial meeting, the group went away to brainstorm different ideas and concept, and three months later, came back together ready to share over a hundred drawings they had produced during that time. The inspiration behind naming themselves "Memphis" came about during their first meeting when Bob Dylan's record "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" had been playing repeatedly in the background. For Sottsass, the name "Memphis" represented two things: a city in Tennessee, and ancient Egypt's capital city. The group of designers then went ahead and used the ambiguity behind the name "Memphis" to represent and symbolise their own ambiguous design philosophies of furniture, objects and textiles. In Sottsass' case specifically, he showed great interest in the middle-class taste, the traditions of the Third World and the East, and for unspoiled nature.

Impact

During their active years, the Memphis Group designed a series of non-conformist furniture. One of their most popular and well known designs is the "Carleton" Room Divider, a totemic pole incorporating a variety of bright colours, solid shapes and voids. The structure itself is constructed using cheap plastic laminates, though designed to be sold by a luxury market, and incorporates a series of equilateral triangles, both real and implied.