Born in 1917, Italian architect and designer Ettore Sottsass is today best known as the founder in the early 1980s of Memphis, the Milan-based design collaborative. As a harbinger of Postmodern design, Memphis - and soon Sottsass himself - became the subject of widespread public attention. As this book demonstrates, however, Sottsass has been a pioneer of worldwide significance in all major fields of design - furniture, ceramics, glass, jewellery, architecture and industrial design - throughout his sixty-five-year career, during which he has collaborated with many of the world's best-known manufacturers, Alessi, Olivetti and Sevres among them.