Memphis Group, any fans or collectors of these designs?

Why does this genre have the Memphis name? Developed on Beale Street?

That looks really cool, but if I buy it I can’t tell local queens who visit me what it is or they’ll go and sell it for meth…

So much fun, so witty, I would love to have it all

Milan founded and inspired by the title of Bob Dylan's 'Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again' and some references to classical architecture, eg Egypt. The ultimate po-mo references.

Karl Lagerfeld a devotee.

Influenced my own art subconsciously

Bowie's collection, auctioned after his death.

Influenced me completely

Most guys on here would own this piece.

Awesome, so funny, clever

R9 Nice cock!

Reminds me of a trapper keeper

Memphis Group must be a gay man's thing. Tom Watkins, one-time manager for the Pet Shop Boys, was a collector

We have a Sotsass vase, but it's a fairly low-key design - I would love more but the prices on that stuff are too much now

The prices are insane.

I covet the Riviera chair. But not at these prices...for one.

Bowie's son (the director Duncan Jones) has that iconic Carlton bookcase, he posted a photo on Twitter once with it in the background

Can you remember if he had any books or objects on it? ^^^ The Carlton is more like a sculpture than a piece of furniture and putting it to its practical use would likely detract from its visual impact.

The 'boxing ring' bed would have looked perfect in American Psycho's apartment.

r17 - he did have books on it, that's what the photo was supposed to be of. I think he'd maybe written a book and he had copies of it piled on the shelves.

This stuff has always been expensive.

It's all just plain ugly.

You say "Memphis Group" and I think of one thing only - the shrewish Bette Midler character in Ruthless People.

Like most 80s design - ugly, pretentious and artificial. I’d rather buy a wood antique than this ugly ass crap. Always hated it - always will. Like Venturi architecture. Conceptual but not beautiful.

When I was a kid I assumed the sets of Ruthless People were production/construction design, rather than something purchased!

Looking at these posts reminds me of the film "Ruthless People" with Bette Midler and Danny DeVito

If their house was not actual Memphis, it was a variation on it.

(Photo at link.)

I thought everything was their stuff, r25. I loved it.

It may well have been R26

I can only but imagine (I was one year old at the time) that the scene where DeVito struggles to find a position to sit in on the couch and winds up looking like a child in a giant chair did a whole lot to help kill off the trend.

Looking at it now, so much of it is very cool looking.. But in small doses - not sure I'd want that Ruthless People room.

Studying Art History and Design in college in the 80s I fell in love with Memphis and wrote a big paper about it. I really thought it would become a major movement, an equivalent to the emergence of Art Nouveau in the 19th Century. I was able to speak so eloquently and enthusiastically about it during my interview for an internship in the Met that I got placed in the Department of 20th Century Design and Architecture.

In the end it really was just about Sottsass with his iconic Casablanca Sideboard and glass works, which I think will be it’s strongest legacy. As noted above it instantly became mocked in movies like Ruthless People and Beetlejuice. If I recall correctly, even before the end of the 20th Century a Memphis designed room from an Upper East Side apartment was torn out and given to the Brooklyn Museum and remains in storage, but unlikely to ever be installed.

Devito is an unfair comparison, he is not even five feet tall! 😂

I think it's cool - like De Stijl, it reminds me of the preschool I went to in the 1970s, or the PBS children's programming of that era. There's something very childlike and playful about it. But I don't know how much of it I'd really want to own (especially for the prices). When it comes down to it I really just want an ordinary, functional bookshelf and comfortable furniture.

"I’d rather buy a wood antique",

That's quite a broad remit R23, given that an antique is considered anything over a century old.

I have 2 chairs.

This is from 2018, I wonder what the fate of this has become?

Cartoon furniture for plastic people

r33 Often have I wondered whether Steve Gold is willing to put out in order to land a listing.