Drawings and photographic material, Anthurium, side table 火鶴花（茶几）繪圖及影像資料

Japanese designer Umeda Masanori created this expressive side table around the same time that he designed a series of sculptural flower-shaped seat furniture for the Italian company Edra, also the manufacturer of this work. The cantilevered wooden tabletop echoes the red heart-shaped spathe—a kind of leaf that partly encloses flowers—of its namesake, the anthurium plant. The wooden form is finished with a high-gloss lacquer to accentuate its vibrant colour and distinctive shape. The yellow lacquered steel spine that rises above the table, mimicking the anthurium’s own central flower spike, visually continues the curve of the base.

Umeda founded his Tokyo design studio in 1980, returning to Japan after working for over a decade with Ettore Sottsass at Olivetti in Italy. Focusing on both product design and commercial interiors, he continued to explore colourful, sculptural forms that can be broadly characterised as postmodernist. Umeda was a participant in the radical Memphis design collective in the early 1980s, and his later work carries with it some of the same expressive spirit, humour, and interest in the symbolic associations of objects. As in this work, he frequently turns to nature for inspiration.