Ettore Sottsass & Marco Zanini for Leitner Donau Collection Bed and Nightstand

Description

A rare and iconic Italian post-modern Donau Collection Bed and Nightstand designed by master architect and furniture designer Ettore Sottsass … more A rare and iconic Italian post-modern Donau Collection Bed and Nightstand designed by master architect and furniture designer Ettore Sottsass (Austria/Italy, 1917-2007) in collaboration with Marco Zanini (Milan, Italy; b.1971) for Leitner Interior Design, circa 1988.

Scarce design, bold and dramatic, sculptural-form, exceptionally executed in Birdseye maple lacquered and laminated wood, including blue accents and columns that offer a visually striking contrast. Retaining the original manufacturer's label, signed, 195/88.

Provenance / Acquisition:
Acquired from highly reputable auction house Heritage Auctions, Dallas, Texas. Design Signature Auction catalog #8110

Dimensions: (approx)
Bed: (Twin XL) 42.5" High, 40.5" Wide, 84.75" Deep
Bedside Table: 17.75" High, 32" Wide, 23.75" Deep

Detailed Condition Report:
Excellent original vintage condition. Very strong, sturdy, stable and structurally sound. Presents well. May have minor wear consistent with age and use, including very minor lacquer loss to top edge of headboard and small loss to wood at one side rail, overall superb examples.

About the designer:
Ettore Sottsass (b.Innsbruck, Austria 1917 – d.Milan, Italy 2007) was a celebrated 20th century Italian architect, noted for also designing furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting, home and office wares, as well as numerous buildings and interiors — often defined by bold colors.

Ettore Sottsass worked as an architect with his father, often on new modernist versions of buildings that were destroyed during the war. In 1947, living in Milan, he set up his own architectural and industrial design studio, where he began to create work in a variety of different media: ceramic, painting, sculpture, furniture, photography, jewelry, architecture and interior design.

With the rise of new groups (Global tools, Archizoom, Superstudio, UFO, Zzigurat, 9999...) the handmade appeared suddenly as the new game for experimentation, a lot of these new groups playing in this new/old path to renew creation. In October 1980, Sottsass was confronted with two proposals, one from Renzo Brugola, a dear old friend and carpenter, telling him his will "to make something together like in the good old times,” and the other one from Mario and Brunella Godani, owners of the Design Gallery Milano, who asked him to create "new furniture" for their gallery.

In 1957, Sottsass joined Poltronova, a semi-industrial producer of contemporary furniture, as an artistic consultant. Much of the furniture he worked on there influenced the design he would create later with Memphis Milano.

In 1956, Sottsass was hired by Adriano Olivetti as a design consultant for Olivetti, to design electronic devices and develop the first Italian mainframe computer, the Elea 9003 for which he was awarded the Compasso d'Oro in 1959. He also designed office equipment, typewriters, and furniture. There Sottsass made his name as a designer who, through color, form and styling, managed to bring office equipment into the realm of popular culture

Ettore Sottsass founded the Memphis Group in Milan on 11 December 1980, after the Bob Dylan song "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" played during the group's inaugural meeting. The group was active from 1981 to 1988. The Memphis group was created in a reaction against the status quo. Sottsass centered the group's thinking around “radical, funny, and outrageous”—essentially, disregarding what was considered in “good taste” at that time. Art deco, the color palette of Pop Art and Kitsch theme from the 1950's inspired their work.

The Memphis Group's (also known as Memphis Milano) work often incorporated plastic, laminate and terrazzo materials in their work and and incorporated in floors, tables and lamps, all characterized by ephemeral design featuring colorful and abstract decoration as well as asymmetrical shapes, sometimes arbitrarily alluding to exotic or earlier styles and designs.

Sottsass also designed his own print. This was a squiggles print also known as Bacterio print. For the print, Sottsass used inspiration from the surface texture and form of a Buddhist temple in Madurai, India, he then abstracted this detail into the squiggles he named Bacterio. This pattern was then used on their furniture designs in as veneers and textiles.

The Memphis Group was a postmodern, collaborative, architecture and design group founded by Sottsass in Milan Italy. The group focused heavily on furniture design with an emphasis on unconventional types. The designers became well known for their bright and bold pieces with clashing colors. At the time, furniture was solely meant to be functional. However, the Memphis Group sought to prove otherwise with their highly decorative pieces. They poked fun at everyday pieces and turned them into works of art. Many criticized and said it was just a trend that wouldn’t last. Their unconventional ideas were controversial but have now become widely recognized and appreciated. The work continues to be influential throughout the world and can be seen in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Design Museum in London, The Museum of Modern Art in New York and many others.

As the Memphis movement in the 1980s attracted attention worldwide for its energy and flamboyance, Ettore Sottsass began assembling a major design consultancy, which he named Sottsass Associati. Sottsass Associati was established in 1980 and gave the possibility to build architecture on a substantial scale as well as to design for large international industries. Besides Ettore Sottsass, the others founding members were Aldo Cibic, Marco Marabelli, Matteo Thun and Marco Zanini. Later, also Johanna Grawunder, Marco Susani, James Irvine, and Mike Ryan will join the firm. In the late 1980s, Sottsass left Memphis to focus on the Associati.

Sottsass Associati, primarily an architectural practice, also designed elaborate stores and showrooms for Esprit, identities for Alessi, exhibitions, interiors, consumer electronics in Japan and furniture of all kinds. The studio was based on the cultural guidance of Ettore Sottsass and the work conducted by its many young associates, who quite often left to open their own studios. Sottsass Associati is now based in London and Milan and continue to sustain the work, philosophy and culture of the studio.

His work is featured around the world, as stunning buildings and highlighting museum collections. As an industrial designer, his clients included Fiorucci, Esprit, the Italian furniture company Poltronova, Knoll International, Serafino Zani, Alessi, Brondi, and Brionvega. As an architect, he designed the Mayer-Schwarz Gallery on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California, with its dramatic doorway made of irregular folds and jagged angles, and the home of David M. Kelley, designer of Apple's first computer mouse, in Woodside, California. The interiors of the Malpensa Airport, in Milan, were designed by Sottsass in the late 1990s, but he did not architect the building. In the mid-1990s, he designed the sculpture garden and entry gates of the W. Keith and Janet Kellogg Gallery at the campus of Cal Poly Pomona. He collaborated with well-known figures in the architecture and design field, including Aldo Cibic, James Irvine, Matteo Thun.

Sottsass created a vast body of work: furniture, jewelry, ceramics, glass, silver work, lighting, office machine design and buildings. He inspired generations of architects and designers. In 2006 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art held the first major museum survey exhibition of his work in the United States. A retrospective exhibition, Ettore Sottsass: Work in Progress, was held at the Design Museum in London in 2007. In 2009, the Marres Centre for Contemporary Culture in Maastricht presented a re-construction of a Sottsass' exhibition 'Miljö för en ny planet' (Landscape for a new planet), which took place in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm in 1969. In 2017, on the occasion of Sottsass' 100th birthday, the Met Breuer museum in New York City presented the retrospective Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical.

One of his works—Telefono Enorme, designed with David M. Kelley for Brondi—is part of the MOMA Collection, as well as many drawings. Design objects and drawings by Sottsass are also in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Design Museum in London, the Vitra Design Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In 1999, he was awarded the Sir Misha Black award and was added to the College of Medallists. In 2023, his work was included in the exhibition Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth at Chatsworth House less