Bitossi Ceramiche - Vase glossy black and metal

Vase hand-turned in white clay. Two-tone glossy black and oxidized matt enamels.
Project year 1959.

Ettore Sottsass

Ettore Sottsass was an Italian architect and designer. His work included furniture, jewelry, glass, lighting, home and office objects, as well as many buildings and interiors. He grew up in Turin and graduated in Architecture from the Politecnico di Torino in 1939. In 1947, in Milan, he founded his architecture and industrial design studio, where he began to create work using various media. In 1956, Sottsass moved to New York and began to work in George Nelson’s design studio. Back in Italy, he established major collaboration projects with Poltronova (1957) and Olivetti (1958). From the late ’60s and throughout the ’70s he collaborated with Superstudio and Archizoom Associati, within the Radical movement, until the foundation of Memphis Group in 1981, of which he was a founding member. In the mid-’80s, with Sottsass Associati, mainly an architecture studio, he also designed elaborate shops and showrooms, company identities, exhibitions, interiors, Japanese consumer electronics, and furniture of all kinds. Ettore Sottsass was presented numerous international awards, winning the ADI Compasso d’Oro in 1959. His work is on show in the permanent collections of many museums around the world such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Centre G. Pompidou in Paris, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Bitossi Ceramiche

Bitossi is a historic identity of Italian manufacturing, present since the second half of the nineteenth century in the area of Montelupo Fiorentino, Tuscany. The Bitossi manufactory, today Bitossi Ceramiche, belongs to the family for five generations and has been located in the same place since 1921. The company in the year 2014 was included in the Register of Italian Historical Enterprises. Bitossi production until the end of the 1940s reflects the traditional taste linked to local production, and then evolved into unique creations exported worldwide that still represent the excellence of Made in Italy. Many designers have approached the production of Manifattura Bitossi over the years, creating new collections. First of all, the architect Ettore Sottsass, who started to collaborate the Bitossi factory from 1955 to experiment and created new modern ceramics.