Postmodern design was a short-lived movement that manifested itself chiefly in Italy and the United States in the early 1980s. The characteristics of vintage postmodern furniture and other postmodern objects and decor for the home included loud-patterned, usually plastic surfaces; strange proportions, vibrant colors and weird angles; and a vague-at-best relationship between form and function.
ORIGINS OF POSTMODERN FURNITURE DESIGN
CHARACTERISTICS OF POSTMODERN FURNITURE DESIGN
POSTMODERN FURNITURE DESIGNERS TO KNOW
VINTAGE POSTMODERN FURNITURE ON 1STDIBS
Critics derided postmodern design as a grandstanding bid for attention and nothing of consequence. Decades later, the fact that postmodernism still has the power to provoke thoughts, along with other reactions, proves they were not entirely correct.
Postmodern design 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. Later, in Milan, a cohort of creators led by Ettore Sottsass and Alessandro Mendini — a onetime mentor to Sottsass and a key figure in the Italian Radical movement — brought the discussion to bear on design.
Sottsass, an industrial designer, philosopher and provocateur, gathered a core group of young designers into a collective in 1980 they called Memphis. Members of the Memphis Group, which would come to include Martine Bedin, Michael Graves, Marco Zanini, Shiro Kuramata, Michele de Lucchi and Matteo Thun, saw design as a means of communication, and they wanted it to shout. That it did: The first Memphis collection appeared in 1981 in Milan 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. Even though it preceded the Memphis Group’s formal launch, Sottsass’s iconic Ultrafragola mirror — in its conspicuously curved plastic shell with radical pops of pink neon — proves striking in any space and embodies many of the collective’s postmodern ideals.
After the initial Memphis show caused an uproar, the postmodern movement within furniture and interior design quickly took off in America. (Memphis fell out of fashion when the Reagan era gave way to cool 1990’s minimalism.) The architect Robert Venturi had by then 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 vintage postmodern furniture collection includes chairs, coffee tables, sofas, decorative objects, table lamps and more.
Travertino Silver Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/130 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Travertino Silver Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/130 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 83 x W 130 x H 36 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY SAI...
Marble
Travertino Silver Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 27/160 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Travertino Silver Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 27/160 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 105 x W 160 x H 27 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY SA...
Marble
Port Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/130 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Port Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/130 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 83 x W 130 x H 36 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY SA...
Marble
Port Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 27/190 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Port Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 27/190 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 125 x W 190 x H 27 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY S...
Marble
Port Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 27/160 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Port Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 27/160 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 105 x W 160 x H 27 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY S...
Marble
Port Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/160 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Port Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/160 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 105 x W 160 x H 36 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY S...
Marble
Port Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/190 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Port Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/190 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 125 x W 190 x H 36 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY S...
Marble
Picasso Green Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 27/190 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Picasso Green Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 27/190 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 125 x W 190 x H 27 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY SAINT ...
Marble
Picasso Green Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/130 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Picasso Green Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/130 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 83 x W 130 x H 36 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY SAINT L...
Marble
Grey Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/130 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Grey Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/130 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 83 x W 130 x H 36 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY SA...
Marble
Grey Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/160 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Grey Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/160 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 105 x W 160 x H 36 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY S...
Marble
Grey Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/190 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Grey Saint Laurent Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/190 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 125 x W 190 x H 36 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY S...
Marble
Kyknos Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/190 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Kyknos Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/190 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 125 x W 190 x H 36 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY SAINT LAURENT...
Marble
Kyknos Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 27/160 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Kyknos Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 27/160 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 105 x W 160 x H 27 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY SAINT LAURENT...
Marble
Kyknos Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/130 by Angelo Alinea
Located in Geneve, CH
Kyknos Contemporary Marble Low Oval Table 36/130 by Angelo Alinea Dimensions: D 83 x W 130 x H 36 cm Materials: Marble Available in: GRAFITE / TRAVERTINO ROSSO / GREY SAINT LAURENT ...
Marble
$9,468 / item
U-Block Signed by Cal Summers
By Cal Summers
Located in Geneve, CH
U-Block signed by Cal Summers Materials: Wood fibre, Resin. Graphite Steel insert with bronze finish Size: 10” D x 14” W 19” H Cal Summers is a British designer who makes bespo...
Wood
$8,853 / item
Arch Side Table by Sam Goyvaerts
Located in Geneve, CH
Arch side table by Sam Goyvaerts Dimensions: 45 x 34 x 34 cm Marble and brass. Its strong design language sets arch 01.1 c apart. The marble object is beautifully fnished with a met...
Marble, Brass
$13,283 / item
Axis Console I by Dovain Studio
Located in Geneve, CH
Axis console I by Dovain Studio Dimensions: H 79 x W 40 cm Materials: Estremoz white marble, Eco leather Dovain Studio Creative direction by Sergio Prieto, a Spanish artist-des...
Marble
$2,442 / item
Airisto Sofa Table, Stained Black by Made by Choice
Located in Geneve, CH
Airisto sofa table, stained black by Made By Choice with Joanna Laajisto Dimensions: W96cm, D35cm, H45 cm Materials: Solid Ash Finishes: Natural Ash / Painted Black Also Availa...
Wood, Ash