The Tartar sideboard by Ettore Sottsass for Memphis (1985) is remarkable in several ways. Sottsass once concurred that this iconoclastic piece was an avid attempt to create a Sottsassian-Cubist work, elements that were 3-D visible from many angles (as Picasso once pioneered with painting & sculpture).
Yet it also implements a very curious and beautiful form of laminate created by him, a reconstituted veneer that "elongated" and blew-up the veining of the natural wood. It was a process that required stacking hundreds of bookmatched sheets of wooden veneer that were glued, compressed and then sawn on the diagonal.
Sottsass therein found another way to "decorate" with a natural material.
Ettore Sottsass Tartar Sideboard for Memphis Srl
Height: 31 in. (78.74 cm)
Width: 76.75 in. (194.95 cm)
Depth: 33.5 in. (85.09 cm)