Ettore Sottsass Ultrafragola Neon Full Length Mirror / Poltronova Srl

Ultrafragola mirror/lamp, with its sinuous profile that suggests long wavy hair, belongs to the Mobili Grigi series of complete bedroom and living room furnishings designed by Ettore Sottsass for Poltronova and presented at the third edition of Eurodomus in 1970. With the exception of Ultrafragola, the models never got beyond the prototype phase. "As for the lights that are coming out of “The grey furniture”, don’t tombs always have a trembling light to illuminate the blue of the spirits wandering in the valley of dust? Don’t submarines have a trembling green light in their belly? The lights anyway are supposed to come out from the fibreglass bodies, like the ever glowing of the breast’s white skin, like the ever—glowing of the penis red head in pornographic nights, something of this kind: I mean something like the Japanese lights of the glow worm that are turning the nights into matter." Ettore Sottsass jr., 1970.Roberta Meloni, CEO of Poltronova, discussing the history of the mirror and how, contrary to the present where it is regarded as a status symbol, it was not initially received very well. “Abitare, one of the most important Italian magazines at that time, did an article in which it defined these projects as awful, horrible,” she recalls. In the decades to follow, the mirror was not appreciated, and Poltronova only sold a few. Roberta attributes this to the fact that Sottsass was misunderstood by his peers and the middle-class market at large. (The best of art and design can be prophetic, sometimes in a way that is incomprehensible to contemporary audiences.) Keith Johnson, CEO of Urban Architecture, the first importer of Memphis furniture in the U.S., and a close friend of Sottsass for many years, fondly remembers the designer as a romantic intellectual with the creative vision of a 19th century poet. Far ahead of its time, the misunderstood masterpiece embraced femininity through a new lens that challenged viewers to soften their gaze.