Ettore Sottsass: Enamels
Enamelled copper vases on a wooden base, Ettore Sottsass, 1958. Photo courtesy of Wallpaper.
As reported in Wallpaper, a show of enamels by Ettore Sottsass at the Vitra Design Museum. Designed by the Italian maestro in 1958 for Il Sestante, a Milanese gallery that, alongside Danese, exhibited and promoted some of the most interesting examples of art and design-led craft in the 1950s and 1960s.
Enamelled copper plate, Ettore Sottsass for Il Sestante. Photo courtesy of Wallpaper.
Exhibited alongside work by the artist Arnaldo Pomodoro, the enamels testify Sottsass’s Renaissance man-like creativity as well as the cross-fertilisation between art, design, and craft disciplines at this time which the Milanese architect exploited for his avant-garde exlorations. The elementary forms, primary colours, and use of the non-precious materials are an early example of Sottsass’s search for an alternative to a design language based on luxury and consumerist desire that was dominating mainstream Italian design at this time, which were later explored in the more well-known Ceramiche di Tenebre and Ceramiche di Shiva from the early 1960s.
Ceramiche delle Tenebre, Ettore Sottsass, Bitossi, 1963 (Bischofberger collection, Zurich, photo © Santi Caleca. Photo courtesy of Domus.
As the architect, Sottsass didn’t make the enamels or ceramics, but entrusted them to Italy’s wealth of craftsmen, communicating his ideas through simple, sign-like sketches also on display in the exhibition.
Drawing used as advert for the Il Sestante exhibition, 1959. Courtesy of Wallpaper.
As the forthcoming V&A exhibition Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970 - 1990 will demonstrate, Sottsass’s interest in ethnographic-inspired forms continued in his career. As the anthropomorphic forms and primal patterns of his furniture for Memphis demonstrate, designing objects that users could connect with on an elementary level persisted in this multi-faceted architect’s practice, of which the 1950s enamels are just the beginning.
