Sotheby’s “Bowie/Collector” sale on November 10 and 11, 2016—and its accompanying exhibition—are bound to draw crowds this fall. The British auction house recently published the entire catalog featuring more than 400 works from David Bowie’s vast collection. Next to prolific artworks is also an impressive collection of furniture and other works by Italian designer Ettore Sottsass and his Milan-based Memphis Group, which wrote design history with its quirky, eccentric creations in the 1980s.Bowie, who studied art, music, and design before starting his career as a musician, was an avid collector of Memphis design, whose unconventional and refined playfulness in form parallels with his own kaleidoscopic approach to musical styles and stage personas.Over time, Bowie managed to purchase about 100 pieces, including icons such as Sottsass’s Post-Modernist “Casablanca” sideboard from the first Memphis collection of 1981 (est. £3,000-5,000), and his “Carlton” bookcase/room divider (est. £5,000-7,000) from the same year; Peter Shire’s toy-like “Big Sur” sofa (est. £3,000-5,000) from 1986, or Martine Bedine’s cheerful “Super Lamp” (est. £250-350) from 1981. Another highlight from two important Memphis-predecessors, the “RR 126 Radiophonograph” (est. £800-1,200), is a stylishly boxy stereo cabinet with controls resembling a robot face and detachable speakers as “ears”, designed in 1966 by brothers Pier Giacomo and Achille Castiglioni for Brionvega (and held in the collections of most of the major design museums today). Bowie’s “RR126” additionally features a modification for digitizing vinyl records—befittingly.All design works will be auctioned at the third part of the sales series, “Bowie/Collector Part III: Design: Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis Group” on November 11, 2016, in London, and shown in an exhibition at the auction house’s New Bond Street galleries in London from November 1-10. See more works from David Bowie’s Design Collection in the slide show.
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