Who remembers the Memphis Group, a post-Bauhaus design movement founded in Milan in 1980 by the late designer Ettore Sottsass?
By Lee Warrien | JSH News
Le Groupe Memphis, fondé par le designer rupturiste Ettore Sottsass a exposé dans plusieurs mégapoles. Ici à Bordeaux.
These code breakers, champions of laminated plastic and acid-pop colors, shades that snap and splash, brought into the world of furniture other materials rupturists: printed glass, foil-metals, celluloid, galvanized and textured steel finishes, industrial paints, neon tubes, colored light bulbs… In 1988, the year the movement was dissolved, Tissot collaborated with the artist to create an anti-conformist timepiece.
In 2021, the Memphis Heritage is released in two versions, Lady or Gent, respectively 34 mm and 41 mm in diameter. It celebrates the 40th anniversary of the formation of the Memphis Group. An arty flashback to the heart of the eighties, sprinkled with a contemporary touch that also includes vegan bands. Limited editions, which for a volume brand like Tissot means massive quantities of 3,000 pieces (PVD models) and 2,500 for the bicolors. Quartz? Yes, but PreciDrive swiss made, COSC certified and ETA branded.
Chief editor & publisher of the online watch magazine "Swiss Watch Passport® (by JSH®)" and of the Swiss watch journal JSH® (founded in 1876). Member of Impressum, PressTourim and Club Suisse de la Presse, this Ivory Coast-born Swiss, descendant of a family of watchmakers, co-founded the magazines Montres Passion & Uhren Welt at Ringier in 1993 with Kenan Tegin, as well as the Prix Montre de l'Année. Founded in 2005, his press agency TàG Press +41 contributes to some twenty media. These include Journal Suisse d'Horlogerie (2008-2014), Heure Suisse/Schweiz and Année Horlogère, F/D/E (2011-2014), Watchonista.com (2013-2019). In 2019, he founded and chaired "JSH Archives & Patrimoine" to relaunch the Swiss watchmaking journal JSH. Then in 2021, he built on his very first editorial venture, the "bloghorloger.ch" founded in 2003, to come back online with the Swiss Watch Passport® (by JSH®). Joël A. Grandjean is a member of the SSC, the Swiss Society of Chronometry, and of the jury of the Prix Gaïa, aka the "Nobel of watchmaking" awarded since 1992 by the MIH, Le Musée International de l'Horlogerie in La Chaux-de-Fonds.
The work of a lifetime, the book "Le Cadran" by Dr. Helmut Crott (edited by Joël A. Grandjean), the history of the dial in the 20th century, the prestigious history of the Stern dials and of a family that took over the Patek Philippe brand
