ETTORE SOTTSASS (1917-2007)

The Beverly cabinet was exhibited at the first Memphis exhibition, Milan, 1981, and an example is now retained in the collection of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. The present example, which bears the numbered tag '4', would have been only the fourth Beverly to have been retailed, and would have been manufactured in 1981. A distinctively inharmonious collage of disparate shapes and textures, selected to celebrate vulgarity and to bypass function, the Beverly today endures as one of the most significant and fluent examples of early Memphis design.