Three new brands, one radical lineage: Gufram, Memphis, and Meritalia
We’re adding three of the most distinctive names in postmodern Italian design to the roster — Memphis Milano, Gufram, and Meritalia. They share a parent (the Italian Radical Design group, headquartered in Piedmont) and a sensibility: design that’s playful, subversive, and not particularly interested in the rules of good taste.
If you’ve spent time in twentieth-century design history, you already know the pieces. The Bocca lips sofa. The Capitello column-chair. Bedin’s Super lamp on wheels. The Tahiti duck-shaped lamp. These aren’t trends — they’re icons that have been in continuous production for decades and have shaped how generations of designers think about color, form, and humor in furniture.
Gufram
The oldest of the three, founded in Turin in 1966. Gufram pioneered the use of polyurethane foam in furniture and became closely associated with the Italian Radical Design movement of the late ‘60s and ‘70s. The Bocca sofa (Studio 65, 1970), Cactus coat rack (Drocco & Mello, 1972), and Pratone lawn chair are all Gufram originals. The brand has a long history of artist and brand collaborations, with Toiletpaper, Moschino, and the Andy Warhol Foundation among them.
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Massolo
$4,700.00 -
Capitello
$8,400.00 -
BOCCA Unlimited
$6,400.00
Memphis Milano
Founded in 1981 in Milan by Ettore Sottsass and a circle of architects and designers, Memphis upended the design world with its riot of color, pattern, and unexpected geometry. The Memphis style — Bacterio laminates, asymmetric forms, primary colors set against pastels — became a defining aesthetic of the 1980s and continues to influence contemporary design and fashion. Pieces by Sottsass, Michele De Lucchi, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Martine Bedin, and George Sowden are still produced today.
Meritalia
Founded in 1987 and most closely associated with Gaetano Pesce, whose decades of collaboration with the brand produced a distinctive body of lighting and objects defined by his signature use of resin, expressive color, and anthropomorphic form. Meritalia is the most recent addition to the Italian Radical Design family.
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Some of US
$2,700.00 -
Mirror
Price range: $2,300.00 through $3,200.00 -
Love
$10,300.00
These three join a deep roster of Italian design classics already at Rewire, adding what may be its most irreverent voice. Together they extend the catalog into its most defiantly playful corner.