1977

Ettore Sottsass, the designer known up until this point for his red Olivetti Valentine typewriter, spots a geometric ceramic teapot in Wetmagazine and tells his partners Aldo Cibic and Matteo Thun to ask the pot’s designer, Peter Shire, to collaborate. The Memphis philosophy — a reaction to the strict, straight lines of modernism — was still inchoate in Sottsass’s mind. But a movement was afoot. “We were talking to each other with these objects,” Shire says. “We responded to big shapes and colors, instead of chrome and leather.” In his early 60s, Sottsass establishes Sottsass Associati, a Milan design consultancy that will become a breeding ground for the future Memphis Group.