Ettore Sottsass began experimenting with that most ancient of mediums, clay, in 1955. By that time the young Sottsass was already gaining recognition as a formidable designer, and was invited by Italian ceramics manufacturer Bitossi and New York-based importer Raymor to design a line of ceramics. Sottsass was enamored by the humble material’s immediacy and versatility, experimenting for two years before his first line of ceramics was released in 1957, thus beginning a decades-long exploration of the material.
Pottery provided Sottsass an almost unlimited palette upon which to experiment with shapes, colors, concepts, and textures in endless explorations of his interests in human history, contemporary art, ancient architecture, traditional craft, and Eastern spiritualism. His ceramic series are a rich and diverse small-scale representation of his design tenets and evolution, and run the gamut from starkly architectural to sensually playful. His 1959 Bianco/Nero (Black/White) ceramics are composed of striped and gridded cylinders and bowls; Rochetti e Isolatori (Reels and Insulators) from 1962 were glossy pieces inspired by spools and electrical insulators; the Tantra and Yantra series from the late 1960s explored Hindu spiritualism; and his large-scale totemic objects were inspired by everything from ancient monoliths to contemporary cityscapes.
In 1964, Sottsass declared his design manifesto to be “as timeless and spaceless as possible to get people to acknowledge the presence of objects…Not as consumer goods, but as instruments of a possible ritual—if we can make a ritual out of life.” Even decades after their creation, his bright, playful, stylistically diverse pottery is relevant and desirable in the design and collecting world, and is sure to remain so for years to come, further cementing the inimitable impact Sottsass has had on nearly every facet of modern design.
Ceramics are older than the Bible and Jesus Christ, older than all the poems that have ever been written, older than goats and cats, older than houses, older than metals...
Ettore Sottsass
Benjamin Pardo and David Gresham are passionate collectors and trained architects and industrial designers with decades of experience in the design industry.
Altogether, Pardo and Gresham’s work and interviews have been featured in over thirty publications including
The New York Times,
Domus, Dwell, Elle Décor, and Architectural Digest.
Pardo was president of the Italian manufacturer Unifor for 17 years before joining Knoll in 2005, where he remained for over 15 years and served as a senior vice president and design director, redefining everything from their global product portfolio to the company’s showrooms and retail architecture. Over the course of his career he has collaborated with and guided the work of Marc Newson, Piero Lissoni, Antonio Citterio and countless others, and curated and renewed the work of Florence Knoll, Mies Van Der Rohe, Harry Bertoia, and George Nakashima, to name but a few. Now, he is a professor of interior architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Pardo’s partner, award-winning designer David Gresham, worked as vice president of design at Fitch, Steelcase, and Wet Design and, since 2011, has run his own design consulting business. Gresham also co-founded Design Logic while a student at Cranbrook Academy of Art in the 1980s, a short-lived but influential company that helped change the design landscape and practices in the United States and abroad. Altogether, Pardo and Gresham’s work and interviews have been featured in over thirty publications including The New York Times, Domus, Dwell, Elle Décor, and Architectural Digest.
Pardo and Gresham’s genuine love of architecture and design and nuanced understanding of how the two co-exist results in a harmonious, layered, visually stimulating collection in which various pieces riff off of one another...
The couple’s considerable experience with design and architecture informs their impeccable ability to combine a variety of modern objects, furniture, and art into what has been described as a cozy, livable form of modernism. They have a particular fondness for Ettore Sottsass’s designs and amassed an impressive array of his ceramics, furniture, and lighting, which they balance with Scandinavian and American modern pieces by Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, and Hans Wegner, and stark, geometric artworks by Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, and Richard Serra. While such an amalgamation of styles could become dissonant and overwhelming, Pardo and Gresham’s genuine love of architecture and design and nuanced understanding of how the two co-exist results in a harmonious, layered, visually stimulating collection in which various pieces riff off of one another: the black of Kelly’s geometric prints continues in the custom black Wegner valet chair and bench, Judd’s bright, hard-edged rectangles call to the architectonic, equally colorful Sottsass vases and teapots, Calder’s black, white, and red tapestry calls to the similarly hued but stylistically different metal flowers by Gherardo Frassa, and so on.
Pardo remarked in a 2008 interview about his and Gresham’s New York apartment that “you don’t want to look at superfluous things.” This thoughtful approach to building a space is evident in each and every work they acquired.
Decoration can be a state of mind, an unusual perception, a ritual whisper.
Ettore Sottsass
Ettore Sottsass 1917–2007
Ettore Sottsass is one of the most significant designers and architects of the late 20th Century, his bold and colorful, Post Modern aesthetic enlivening objects, furniture and interiors and influencing design around the world. Born in Innsbruck, Austria in 1917, Sottsass and his family moved to Turin, Italy in 1929 so he could study architecture at the Politecnico di Turino. He graduated with a degree in architecture in 1939 but he was called to serve the Italian army during World War II and he spent most of the war in a concentration camp. Upon his return in 1945, he worked for his father, Ettore Sottsass senior, an architect practicing in Turin, before relocating to Milan to curate a craft exhibition at the 1946 Triennale.
In Milan, Sottsass began writing for the art and architectural magazine, Domus. It was also here in Milan that Sottsass founded his own architectural and industrial design practice establishing a name for himself by the end of the 1950s with the design of fashionable office equipment for Olivetti. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Sottsass created radical and experimental designs for forward thinking companies like Poltronova. Sottsass’ exploration of a new visual language included collaborating with artists such as Alessandro Mendini and Andrea Branzi and culminated in the formation of the radical design collective, Memphis whose work was widely accepted and shown all over the world.
Notable architectural projects by Sottsass include the interiors of a chain of stores for Esprit (1985) and the Malpensa airport near Milan (2000). He received many awards and honors throughout his lifetime and his work has been the subject of numerous international publications and exhibitions including a recent retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Designs by Sottsass can be found in the permanent collections of many museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Auction Results Ettore Sottsass
