The word Memphis takes me back to my time in set design at the BBC when any studio design worth its salt took Memphis as its inspiration, and was mapped in myriad geometric shapes in a palette of complementary colours applied to shapes that looked straight out of the nearest toyshop. Memphis was complex, it looked crazy, but it was always cheerful.
Memphis was an Italian design group which was brought together in Milan by the iconic architect and designer Ettore Sottsass, who was probably most famous for designing the Olivetti typewriter. The name Memphis was arbitrary: The group simply took it from the title of the Dylan track that was playing during their first meeting. In the brief window of time of no more than about six years when they came together, from 1981 until 1987, the group designed and exhibited furniture and objects that exemplified post-modernism which defined that time.
Is their quirky eccentricity forever to be discarded to the mercy of the history books? Absolutely not, I would say. Perhaps it is this summer's tide of pastel fashion which set my mind wandering back to Memphis's heyday. Those fresh colours are a feast for the senses.
I have made the happy discovery that Memphis never actually disappeared, it is alive and well in Milan and has a website Memphis Milano from which it sells its original designs.
We are still locked into an age of minimalism, with the complex and the
illogical pared out of every detail. Within that minimalist framework we
feel now the need to add a few drops of the purely irrational. I think it could be time to revisit Memphis.
1 Ceramic teapot 'Colorado' designed in 1983 by Marco Zanini via Memphis Milano
2 Table 'Mimosa', plastic laminate with glass top, designed in 1984 by Ettore Sottsass via Memphis Milano. 3 Room collection of Memphis Milano. Photo by Dennis Zanone via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY license.
