1980s Memphis Style Slipper Chairs by Milo Baughman for Thayer Coggin Prisma Collection, a Pair

Baughman was inspired by the courageous young avant-garde designers known as the Memphis Group that burst on to the works stage in 1981 with a total disregard for the traditions and design tenants of restrained, idealized Modernism, Baughman designed a small collection of 11 colorful, post-modern pieces and convinced Coggin to put the collection into production by 1984. The unexpected designs made a splash upon their debut, with critics praising Baughman’s graceful and carefully considered take on the wild Italian ‘new design.’ The wider American audience and Coggin’s well-to-do yet conservative clientele did not take to Baughman’s experiment in exercising complete creative control. ”Only galleries bought it,” Baughman told the NYT in the months after the collection’s release. Pieces from the 1984 Prisma collection are extremely difficult to come by.

Literature: Oscar Fitzgerald, American furniture: 1650 to the Present , 2017. P 517; CH 19 Postmodern and AvantGarde Furniture since 1975 Carol Vogel, Home design; high point’s new verve New York Times, April 29, 1984 Dylan Landis, Sowing the Seeds of Good Design Chicago Tribune, July 19, 1987.