George Sowden for Memphis Milano.

GEORGE SOWDEN (Leeds, 1942) for Memphis Milano.
“Primula” Chair. Materialism Series, 2018.
Wood painted with acrylic paint
In excellent condition with minimal signs of use.
Measurements: 90 x 40 x 46 cm.
With “Primula,” George J. Sowden revisits—decades after the original Memphis explosion—one of the fundamental ideas that made that movement a defining chapter in 20th-century design: transforming an everyday object into an object of expression. The chair is part of the Materialism collection, presented in 2018 by Memphis / Post Design, an exhibition that brought together furniture, ceramics, rugs, and drawings by Sowden and Nathalie Du Pasquier. Both had been leading figures in the first generation of Memphis and participated in that venture from its founding.
Founded around Ettore Sottsass in Milan, Memphis broke with the notion in the 1980s that good design had to be necessarily understated, rational, and purely functional. In contrast to modernist dogma, its designers introduced color, geometry, decoration, irony, and popular references, blending industrial materials with a sensibility akin to craftsmanship. In its first presentation.
George J. Sowden studied architecture at the Gloucestershire College of Art before moving to Milan in 1970. There he began working alongside Ettore Sottsass and Olivetti, an experience that proved fundamental to his subsequent career and his approach to industrial design and new technologies. In 1981, along with Sottsass, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Michele De Lucchi, Aldo Cibic, Martine Bedin, and other designers, he became one of the founding members of Memphis. In 1991, he received the prestigious Compasso d’Oro award for the OFX420 fax machine designed for Olivetti, and in 2010, he launched his own brand, SOWDEN, dedicated to everyday objects and products.