Enorme Telephone
Ettore Sottsass Italian, born Austria
Designer David Kelley
Not on view
The Enorme telephone was the result of a collaboration between Sottsass and his friend David Kelley, founder of the design firm IDEO. Sottsass created the conceptual design, and Kelley and his team were responsible for the engineering and detail design. To produce the telephone, the two formed the Enorme Corporation with a third friend, Jean Pigozzi. As a play on the name of the telephone, Sottsass drew a sumo wrestler to use as a corporate logo (against the designer Shiro Kuramata’s advice that the wrestler in this context exploited a Japanese stereotype). Like the Valentine typewriter, the Enorme added an element of joy to what was considered a purely utilitarian object.
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