New Treefrog Designer Veneers

Treefrog is offering new designer veneers from ALPI, our Italian supplier.
Learn more about the designers and see the new veneers.

Treefrog is offering new designer veneers from ALPI, our Italian supplier. Learn more about the designers and see the new veneers.

Piero Lissoni is an architect, art director and designer who is the creative director for ALPI. He also leads Lissoni & Partners a multi-discipline global design firm with offices in Milan and New York.

Piero Lissoni leads Lissoni & Partners a multi-discipline global design firm with offices in Milan and New York. For over thirty years, he has developed projects the world over in the fields of architecture, landscape and interior, as well as in product and graphic design.

Piero Lissoni is creative director for Alpi, B&B Italia, Boffi, Living Divani, Lema, Lualdi, Porro and Sanlorenzo for whom he also designs an extensive range of products. Recognized as one of the masters of contemporary design, he has worked with many international brands including Alessi, Antrax, Atlas Concorde, B&B Italia, Bonacina1889, Cappellini, Cassina, Cotto, De Padova, Fantini, Flos, Glas Italia, Golran, Illy, Janus et Cie, Kartell, Kerakoll, KN Industrie, Knoll, Nerosicilia, Olivari, Salvatori, Tecno, Viccarbe.

In the 1980s, ALPI collaborated with Ettore Sottsass, a founder of the Memphis design movement, on wood veneer designs. They reintroduced these designs several years ago and now Treefrog is making one of these designs available in its collection.

Ettore Sottsass, Austrian born in the era of WW1, studied in Italy and opened his architecture and design office in Milan in 1947. In 1958, he began a 30 year plus collaboration with Olivetti, during which he received three Compasso d’Oro design awards. Throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, Sottsass’s work explored themes that would stand central to his designs in the years to come. Always a prolific writer, artist, designer and architect, Sottsass laid the foundations for what would later be called Nuovo Design. In 1980 he founded Sottsass Associati Studio and Memphis.

In the 1980s, ALPI, Treefrog’s Italian supplier, partnered with Sottsass to create Memphis wood veneer designs suggesting unusual combinations in Sottsass signature style. The collection was resurrected by ALPI several years ago. Currently, Treefrog is offering one design from their Sottsass design collection.

What is Memphis? Memphis is a post modern design response to the rigidity and blandness of Modernism. It clashes bold colors, art deco kitsch and pop art. It was so named because Bob Dylan’s “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” was repeatedly playing while a large group of designers brainstormed the future of design.

Memphis continued its influence well after Ettore Sottsass passed away in 2007.  Sottsass works are in the permanent collections of a wide range of museums including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and MOMA, New York, among others. Memphis continues to influence design today, regularly present in the designs of artists, designers and influential global design brands.