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Studio 45 machine by Ettore Sottsass for Olivetti 1967
€180€150-17%
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RIVE DE GIER, FranceOn Whoppah since January 2025 • 11 sales
Product description
Iconic and magnificent Studio 45 typewriter by Ettore Sottsass for Olivetti.
Barcelona, Spain, 1967
This iconic collector's item is also on display at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Photos.
ABS, metal, and rubber construction.
With its original carrying case.
Works.
Width 34 cm.
Depth 36 cm.
Height 15 cm.
Exceptional condition, like new.
Only the carrying case has a crack.
Ettore Sottsass:
Born in 1917 in Innsbruck, Austria, in his mother's native region, Ettore Jr. was considered an early-born architect. His parents moved to Turin in 1929 because Italy had the best architecture school, and Ettore Sr. wanted his son to study there. Although he loved painting, Ettore Jr. acquiesced to his father's wishes and earned a degree in architecture in 1939.
Fresh out of school, he was drafted into the Italian army and spent most of World War II in a Yugoslav concentration camp.
"There was nothing brave or pleasant about that ridiculous war in which I fought," Sottsass wrote.
"I learned nothing." "It was a waste of time."
After the war, he worked on housing projects with his father before moving to Milan in 1946 to prepare a crafts exhibition for the Triennale. During the following decade, Sottsass pursued his passions for painting, writing for Domus, art and architecture magazines, set design, and working as an architect and industrial designer.
In 1957, Sottsass became a creative consultant for Polotronova, a furniture factory near Florence. In 1958, he accepted a more demanding consulting role for the electronics division of Olivetti, the Italian industrial group. Sottsass was hired by Adriano Olivetti, the founder, and worked alongside his son, Roberto. Together with the engineer Mario Tchou, they created a series of flagship products, technically innovative and aesthetically appealing thanks to Sottsass's love of Pop Art and Beat culture. They won the prestigious Compasso d'Oro award. Sottsass won the d'Oro in 1959 with the Elea 9003, the first Italian calculator, and revolutionized typewriter design with Olivetti's first electronic model, the Tekne.
Throughout the 1960s, Sottsass traveled to the United States and India, remaining a central figure in the Italian avant-garde and designing more iconic products for Olivetti. The culmination of this was the Valentine typewriter in bright red plastic, which he described as "a ballpoint pen among typewriters." Much later, Sottsass would reject the Valentine, considering it "too obvious, a bit like a girl wearing a very short skirt and too much makeup." However, it is still considered an iconic "pop" product today. His furniture designs were equally influential, notably the "Superbox" developed for Polotronova. In 1972, Sottsass participated in the new Domestic Landscape exhibition at MoMA in New York.
In the late 1970s, Sottsass collaborated with Studio Alchymia, a group of avant-garde furniture designers including Alessandro Mendini and Andrea Branzi, on an exhibition at the 1978 Milan Furniture Fair. Two years later, Sottsass parted ways with Mendini to form a new collective, Memphis, with Branzi and some twenty other collaborators, including Michele De Lucchi, George Sowden, Matteo Thun, and Nathalie du Pasquier.
Memphis embodied the themes Sottsass had been experimenting with since his "superboxes" of the mid-1960s: bright colors, kitschy patterns, and inexpensive materials like laminate. But this time, they captured the attention of the media and design connoisseurs. Memphis (named after a Bob Dylan song) was then presented as the future of design. For the young designers of the time, it was an intellectual lightning rod, freeing them from the rationalism they had been taught at university and allowing them to adopt a more fluid and conceptual approach to design. The work of the Memphis collective was exhibited all over the world until Sottsass left in early 1985.
He then focused on Sottsass Associati, the architecture and design group where he worked with former Memphis members and younger collaborators, such as the designers and architects James Irvine and Johanna Grawunder. Sottsass returned to architecture in 1985 when he was asked to design the new concept for the Esprit stores.
He also designed a series of private houses—including one in Palo Alto for the industrial designer David Kelley—and public buildings, notably Milan's Malpensa Airport. Sottsass Associati also worked for Apple, NTT, Philips, and Siemens, while Sottsass himself continued his artisanal projects in glass and ceramics. Revered in Italy as the doyen of 20th-century design, Ettore Sottsass is also cited as a model by young foreign designers, such as Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, for the scope—as well as the quality—of his work.
He died on December 31, 2007, at his home in Milan at the age of 90.
Specifications
ConditionExcellentColorsMintMaterialPlastic, MetalNumber of items1Height15 cmWidth34 cmDepth36 cm
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About this seller
RIVE DE GIER, FranceOn Whoppah since January 2025 • 11 sales