Is this a functional bookshelf? Hardly. And that was exactly the point. Designed for the first Memphis collection, Carlton is part bookcase, part cabinet and part room divider. Its coloured laminate surfaces, angled shelves and totem-like silhouette defy the functionalist language of modernist furniture. It seems to stand like a figure in the room, with outstretched arms, a head and a broad patterned base..
Ettore Sottsass, Carlton bookcase and room divider, 1981. Wood covered with decorative plastic laminate, 190 × 40 × 196 cm. Memphis, Milan. The lower base uses Sottsass’s black-and-white Bacterio pattern. Examples are held by MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. Photo © ballo+ballo 1984
Despite its unruly appearance, Carlton is carefully constructed from wood and plastic laminate. Its shelves can hold books and objects, but practical storage is only part of its purpose. Placed away from the wall, it becomes a freestanding presence that divides and reshapes the room. In this sense, Sottsass turned an ordinary domestic furnishing into architecture, image and symbol at once
The lower base of Carlton uses Sottsass’s black-and-white Bacterio pattern. Here you see a formal exercise for plastic laminate surfaces for Abet Laminati, 1979.. Inspired by the typical 1950s surfaces of an ‘American Diner’. Source Met Museum
The clash between inexpensive laminate and finely crafted, high-priced furniture was deliberate. The Metropolitan Museum describes this combination as a subversion of “high and low,” while the vivid composition has often been compared to avant-garde painting and sculpture. Its geometric construction combines triangles, rectangles, solids and empty spaces rather than concealing the object’s structure behind a conventional cabinet form.
Designs for Carlton Bookcase and Casablanca Sideboard. Source collections.vam.ac.uk Credit: Victoria and Albert Museum. Copyright: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
It became the most recognisable object associated with Memphis –perhaps too recognisable for Sottsass himself. Barbara Radice later wrote that he disliked being reduced to a single image or symbol, fearing a kind of creative claustrophobia. Carlton nevertheless remains an unusually complete expression of the Memphis project: furniture that communicates through colour, metaphor and character rather than function alone.
Source: Memphis.it
Made by Memphis in Milan, Carlton measures approximately 190 × 40 × 196 cm. Auction records describe it as laminate over wood; Wright has offered examples from different periods and editions, including one from the Zanone Collection that sold for $15,000 in 2019. Minor differences in published measurements probably result from individual measurement methods rather than substantially different models.