Ettore Sottsass

Ettore Sottsass founded the Memphis group in Milan in 1981, setting colour, pattern and deliberate awkwardness against the restraint that Italian design had settled into.

Callimaco, made for Artemide in 1982, is a floor lamp the size of a person: a bright yellow tube with a handle, a cone at the top, and a coil of red at the joint.

The name comes from a Hellenistic poet, and the object behaves more like a figure standing in the room than a light fitting — which was the point.