The Paris auction house Tajan on March 17 sold the most gorgeous sofa – and flashback to the 1970s – by the designer Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007).
A ‘Tapis volant’ (flying carpet) two-side sofa, created in 1974, its base was covered with a tufted carpet in red wool with rolling curves above.
Its seat and back comprised foam covered by a red and green zipped jersey, with – and I love this – just one armrest in stained beech.
Dynamic shapes and bold colours
Sottsass was an Italian architect noted not only for designing buildings, but for jewellery, glass, lighting and domestic and office furniture, in dynamic shapes and bold colours.
Born in Austria, he grew up in Turin, where his father was a modernist architect. He eventually opened his own architecture and design firm in Milan.
In 1956, Sottsass was hired by Adriano Olivetti to design electronic devices and develop the first Italian mainframe computer, the Elea 9003, for which he won major awards.
Radical, funny, outrageous
The following year he joined the furniture manufacturer Poltronova. The projects he worked on there influenced the design he would create later with Memphis Milano, the group with which he is most associated nowadays.
Sottsass founded the Memphis Group in 1980, after the Bob Dylan song ‘Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again’ played during its inaugural meeting in Milan.
He centred its thinking around ‘radical, funny, and outrageous’ – essentially rejecting what was considered ‘good taste’ at that time.
Their ideas were controversial, but have now become widely recognised and appreciated.
The ‘flying carpet’ sofa has featured in several published histories of design and is rare.
It found a new home for a double-estimate €12,500, about £10,500.
