Ettore Sottsass, founder of Memphis

Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007) changed the face of Italian design twice. An Austrian-Italian architect trained in Turin, he became in 1958 artistic director of Olivetti, where he signed the typewriters and calculators that would define Italian industrial design: the Lettera 22, the Valentine (1969). Twenty years later, at sixty-five, he founded in 1981 the Memphis group, a joyful and radical manifesto against modernist good taste: coloured laminates, zigzag patterns, asymmetric shapes. Carlton, Casablanca, Beverly. Design becomes pop, ironic, free.

The Carlton bookshelf, Casablanca desk and Valentine Olivetti typewriter remain Ettore Sottsass's most iconic pieces. Italian vintage furniture to find for those wanting a design object that dares everything: colour, form, statement.