Memphis Group

Memphis was founded in Milan in 1981 by Ettore Sottsass and a group of designers who had had enough of the good-taste modernism they had grown up inside. The answer was laminate, clashing colour, asymmetry and shapes that mocked function — a bookshelf that looks like a skyline, a lamp shaped like nothing useful.

It was a posture as much as a style: the pieces were designed to be photographed and argued about, and they were. Almost all of the output is small-run, and much of what circulates now is later re-edition rather than the 1980s pieces, which is the distinction that decides the price.

Read it by the materials. The originals are plastic laminate, glass and metal — cheap industrial surfaces used on purpose — and rarely have the fit you would expect at the asking price, because precision was not the point.

The founding years (1981–1984) are the important ones: the first collection, the Carlton bookcase, and the designs made before the group became a brand.

The later years (1984–1987) broaden the output and lose some of the edge, after which the group dissolved into individual practices.