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Poltronova

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Durga Temple [aka Monkey Temple] in Varanasi, Indi

Mobili Grigi. Photo by Ettore Sottsass jr. and Alb

Mobili Grigi. Photo by Ettore Sottsass jr. and Alberto Fioravanti, 1970.
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Ultrafragola and the “Mobili Grigi” series, in “Ultrafragola:ettoreSottsass jr., “The monographs of Poltronova”, 2020, text by @francescabalenaarista.
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The third edition of Eurodomus, organised by “Domus” magazine and Torino Esposizioni, was held for the first time in Palazzo dell’Arte in Milan, after the two previous events in Genoa and Turin, and offered huge potential for international visibility. The reactions of the public and business insiders to Sottsass’s project were very strong. The position of “Abitare” magazine was emblematic of the general tone, criticising the Mobili Grigi series along the lines of “No, no, not this” and judging it to be in bad taste.
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Mobili Grigi. Photo by Ettore Sottsass jr. and Alb

Mobili Grigi. Photo by Ettore Sottsass jr. and Alberto Fioravanti, 1970.
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Ultrafragola and the “Mobili Grigi” series, in “Ultrafragola:ettoreSottsass jr., “The monographs of Poltronova”, 2020, text by @francescabalenaarista.
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It wasn’t the unusual technology, or perhaps even the dark grey colour —chosen intentionally for its lack of commercial appeal— that disturbed the public so much as the fact that Sottsass used design, like art, as a tool for reflection, criticism and provocation. In Could anything be more ridiculous, in which he compares the Mobili Grigi and the Ceramiche Yantra (another design for Poltronova), Sottsass writes: «You need to put as many Mobili Grigi in a room as possible [...]. At this point you feel almost suffocated by a brilliant grey geological sloughing of plastic [...], you feel completely isolated from everything outside the room, as if you were in the burning red Monkey Temple in Benares, or in Captain Nemo’s submarine, or in the dusty grey Royal Tomb [...] or on a silent journey through the solid black sky between Mars (the planet) and Orion (the star). It is a journey that is also a death, as is always the case if you are deeply immersed in reality. What more do you want?».
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Mobili Grigi. Photo by Ettore Sottsass jr. and Alb

Mobili Grigi. Photo by Ettore Sottsass jr. and Alberto Fioravanti, 1970.
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Ultrafragola and the “Mobili Grigi” series, in “Ultrafragola:ettoreSottsass jr., “The monographs of Poltronova”, 2020, text by @francescabalenaarista.
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The photographs taken with Alberto Fioravanti, in which human presence is reduced to a fragment —a hand appearing from behind the bedhead, a leg poking out of a wardrobe, a woman with her head resting on the table— amplify this sense of searching for existential awareness.
The series includes the Elledue bed with its illuminated pink bedhead —later produced in sky blue too, and separately as the floor—standing lamp Elle— the Bicinque wardrobe capped by an illuminated yellow lampshade, the Unisex corner cabinet with two orange neon lights on either side of the vacuum—moulded doors, the three—shelf Essetre bookcase, the round Aromatico table, the Malatesta chair, the Ultrafragola mirror and the Piquattro record/magazine rack. The Bruco and Cometa lamps also form part of the same experiment.
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Mobili Grigi, original drawings by Ettore Sottsass

Mobili Grigi, original drawings by Ettore Sottsass jr., 1970.
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Ultrafragola and the “Mobili Grigi” series, in “Ultrafragola:ettoreSottsass jr., “The monographs of Poltronova”, 2020, text by @francescabalenaarista.
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Intentionally destabilising, there was no way the Mobili Grigi series could have been a market success, not even in the subsequent, mitigated, white version. This caused cracks to appear in the designer’s already delicate relationship with Poltronova. «The internal commission —writes Sottsass— told Cammilli that he had better stop spending money to produce more or less useless furniture like the designs I was proposing». So, in about 1973, Sottsass left the company because his work was too far ahead of the times to be accepted. The Ultrafragola mirror is the only remaining witness to the bold experimentation of the Mobili Grigi series, with the exception of a few rare and highly sought—after prototypes made of the other pieces.
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Collage by Ettore Sottsass jr. for a never printed

Collage by Ettore Sottsass jr. for a never printed Poltronova catalog.
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Ettore Sottsass jr. interviewed by Francesca Balena Arista.
From Ettore Sottsass. A private scrapbook. 1957—2007.
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Francesca Balena Arista: This collage with the Ultrafragola mirror from the Poltronova Archives, is it yours?
The figure of the woman in the mirror seems like a dancer from one of Toulouse—Lautrec’s paintings.
Ettore Sottsass: Yes. This collage was for a Poltronova catalog that was never produced. But the image is from a book by an Austrian nobleman who had fun drawing deeply erotic scenes at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Mirrors are used mainly by women, and women have a natural flair for seduction. What wasn’t a success, let’s say, and didn’t sell was my constant striving to give a meaning to design, to give it a sense.
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Francesca Balena Arista: And do you think this sells today? Have people finally understood you?
Ettore Sottsass: No, they don’t understand me today. They use me and sell me. And when you sell something, you don’t necessarily understand what it is that you’re selling: you just sell it, because you’ve realised there’s a market for it. [Contents by The monographs of Poltronova: Ultrafragola. Ettore Sottsass jr, edited by Francesca Balena Arista, Donatello D’Angelo and Elisabetta Trincherini, Centro Studi Poltronova per il Design, Florence 2020]
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Ettore Sottsass jr. during interview in his studio

Ettore Sottsass jr. during interview in his studio in Milan.
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Ettore Sottsass jr. interviewed by Francesca Balena Arista.
From Ettore Sottsass. A private scrapbook. 1957—2007.
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Francesca Balena Arista: How did your relationship with Poltronova begin?
Ettore Sottsass: As I think I’ve written somewhere, my story with Poltronova began in 1956—57. In 1956 I was in the United States and more or less unemployed both when I went there and when I came back. When I returned, the artist Agenore Fabbri called me and said, “Listen, there’s a company here in Tuscany called Poltronova that wants someone to design furniture for them.” I was, of course, excited at the prospect because I didn’t have any work, so I said, OK, let’s do something!. [Contents by The monographs of Poltronova: Ultrafragola. Ettore Sottsass jr, edited by Francesca Balena Arista, Donatello D’Angelo and Elisabetta Trincherini, Centro Studi Poltronova per il Design, Florence 2020]
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We offer you a pleasant biweekly reading on the history of our iconic products. Just sign up here and you’re done! >>> http://eepurl.com/gxXn_z
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#designbreak #istayhomefor #iorestoacasa #poltronova #ettoresottsass #sottsass #radicaldesign #popdesign #design #architecture #furniture #furnituredesign #italiandesign #madeinitaly #themonographsofpoltronova #privatescrapbook

Mobili Grigi, P4 album storage, 1970. – Ettore S

Mobili Grigi, P4 album storage, 1970.
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Ettore Sottsass jr. interviewed by Francesca Balena Arista.
From Ettore Sottsass. A private scrapbook. 1957—2007.
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Francesca Balena Arista: The photographic images you used to tell the story of this furniture are very unusual, can you explain them to us?
Ettore Sottsass: In the photographs for Poltronova there’s the idea that furniture isn’t a catalogue of individual objects placed in a home, but the design of a place or what we might call an existential state. In the photographs of the Mobili Grigi series there’s a woman with her hair on the table, for example, and one where you can only see her leg… the fact that I put these legs in them, these items… in a certain sense was an announcement that the furniture is designed for an existence that is aware of existential disaster. They aren’t designed for a middle—class family, all happy and contented and so on. They create a strange, almost metaphysical setting, which meant they worked even less well on the market, there was just no way around it.
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Francesca Balena Arista: These images also contain references to the sensual or even sexual dimension of existence.
Ettore Sottsass: Absolutely. What you call sensual I call sensory: life is perceived first sensorily and then intellectually. And sexuality forms part of this sensory vocabulary. [Contents by The monographs of Poltronova: Ultrafragola. Ettore Sottsass jr, edited by Francesca Balena Arista, Donatello D’Angelo and Elisabetta Trincherini, Centro Studi Poltronova per il Design, Florence 2020]
–
We offer you a pleasant biweekly reading on the history of our iconic products. Just sign up here and you’re done! >>> http://eepurl.com/gxXn_z
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.
.
.
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#designbreak #istayhomefor #iorestoacasa #poltronova #ettoresottsass #sottsass #mobiligrigi #radicaldesign #popdesign #design #architecture #furniture #furnituredesign #italiandesign #madeinitaly #themonographsofpoltronova #privatescrapbook

The Book by Pier Carlo Santini, “Facendo mobili

The Book by Pier Carlo Santini, “Facendo mobili con…”, Poltronova Edizioni, Agliana 1977.
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Ettore Sottsass jr. interviewed by Francesca Balena Arista.
From Ettore Sottsass. A private scrapbook. 1957—2007.
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Francesca Balena Arista: In 1977, when the book Facendo mobili con... was published, in which the story of the Poltronova first twenty years in business is told, the designers were asked a question: Is living easy? You answered by first drawing two people embracing in bed, with their clothes scattered everywhere and a simple table laid with plates and glasses: living is easy here; then a table overflowing with food and drink: living becomes difficult here. Why?
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Ettore Sottsass: Living is easy is a bourgeois statement, let’s say. Living is easy when you have the money to live. It’s difficult to have a fully laid table, you need to be middle class to have one. It’s easy for me, for you and for our friends, but many people don’t have a table to lay, and that doesn’t mean just things to put on it, but not even the table itself!
In life too, the experience of the home can be easier or more difficult. You may have put lots of lovely oranges and flowers in the room, but if you’ve been told your dad is sick, living there suddenly becomes difficult. When you fall in love with a girl and marry her, you’re all happy for a while, living is easy and anything goes. When I got married, we were so poor I had to climb three flights of stairs to fetch wood for the fire. Our home decoration was improvised and if we had a colourful cushion we were all happy.
Now that I’m older and weaker, I can’t sleep for example, I can’t fight back the thoughts. I’m not sure how to answer the question of whether Living is easy: is living life easy?
Francesca Balena Arista: Living life no.
Ettore Sottsass: In that case, neither is living the experience of your home.

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Design Diffusion
2005 November

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