Ettore Sottsass Jr. and the Mobili Fly: When Design Dared to Challenge Convention

In a Paris department store in the early 1960s, Ettore Sottsass Jr. observed something that would reshape his vision of domestic space. The young women shopping there wore clothes in colours so vivid, so unapologetically saturated, that the designer experienced a revelation. Here was the palette of a new generation, and here, he understood, lay the seed of a radically different interior.

From that moment of observation emerged the Mobili Fly series, conceived in 1964 in collaboration with the Florentine manufacturer Poltronova. It was not furniture in the traditional sense. These were pieces conceived as manifestos, each one a quiet act of rebellion against the restrained good taste that had long governed the bourgeois home.

The Prototype as Vision

Sottsass imagined the Mobili Fly series with the restlessness of an artist perpetually reimagining possibility. He conceived numerous variations on each form, yet with rare exceptions, the pieces never entered Poltronova's catalogue. What survives today exists largely as one of a kind, each example a prototype that captures the designer's thinking at a precise moment. The handwritten annotations on his original drawings reveal the texture of his process: notes on lacquer finishes, on the use of dark tiles paired with gleaming surfaces, on the deliberate provocation of departing from what he perceived as conservative taste.

This was design as interrogation. The Mobili Fly series was not conceived to be safe or to flatter convention. Rather, Sottsass sought to dismantle the very grammar of the domestic interior, to propose an alternative language rooted not in historical precedent but in the chromatic and emotional intensity of contemporary life.

Rarity and Historical Significance

The arrival of these pieces at auction represents a distinctive moment for collectors and institutions. As prototypes born from a singular creative moment, they carry the authority of works made at a threshold in design history. The mid 1960s marked Sottsass's transition from industrial designer to the visionary who would later found Memphis, the radical postmodern collective that transformed design discourse in the 1980s. The Mobili Fly series occupies a crucial position in that arc, a moment when his ambitions were still rooted in craftsmanship and individual manufacture rather than the provocative seriality he would later embrace.

These are objects made for contemplation, not mere use. They embody a philosophy that remained central to Sottsass throughout his practice: that design should challenge, provoke and ultimately expand the possibilities of how we inhabit space. In their rarity and in their relationship to the artist's wider body of work, they merit the serious attention of collectors drawn to moments of genuine innovation.

The Sale

Phillips brings these exceptional examples to its London Design sale on 4 November, offering collectors and institutions an opportunity to acquire works that encapsulate a pivotal moment in postwar Italian design and, more broadly, in the evolution of twentieth century modernism. Each piece carries the direct signature of Sottsass's hand and vision, rendered physical in lacquer, tiles and form.

The Mobili Fly series stands as testimony to a designer unafraid to follow his observations into formal expression, to translate what he saw in the vibrant dress of strangers into a philosophy of colour and space. In these prototypes, history and individual creativity converge.

Key Facts

• Designer: Ettore Sottsass Jr.
• Series: Mobili Fly
• Year of Design: 1964
• Manufacturer: Poltronova
• Sale: Phillips Design, London
• Date: 4 November 2026

The Simply Luxury View

For collectors of twentieth century design, the Mobili Fly series occupies singular territory. These are not production pieces, but rather the direct expression of Sottsass's artistic intention at a moment when his influence was beginning to reshape the entire discourse of interior design. Their rarity is compounded by their philosophical weight: they represent a decisive break with the restrained modernism that dominated design in the 1950s.

The significance of this sale lies not merely in the acquisition of objects, but in the opportunity to understand Sottsass's creative process at a crucial inflection point. These prototypes reveal a designer in full command of his intellectual vision, uncompromised by commercial restraint, and resolved to challenge the conservative aesthetics of the day. For those collectors whose taste values authenticity, innovation and historical moment, these pieces represent a moment of genuine consequence.

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