No we didn’t. Be serious. Now, let’s be honest. I recall no parties, no wild times. Perhaps because I wasn’t there. Memphis, for me, happened elsewhere. Then as now, I did not go to the Milan Furniture Fair. Memphis, at the time, was something that happened in other people’s magazines. Even Blueprint would not come into existence until November 1983, by which time Memphis was over, so far as shock value was concerned. This makes the title of Blueprint’s rare 1980s anthology volume, “From Matt Black to Memphis and Back Again”, at first somewhat puzzling, not least because Memphis is conspicuously absent from its pages. It may be because “Memphis” rapidly became shorthand for “postmodern”, and there was plenty of that around. But I digress.

Get the history down. This may be important. If it happened 20 years ago, that means that there will very shortly be designers and art historians out there who were not even born when Memphis was. It’s as distant as the Festival of Britain was from decimal currency. Those were respectively 1951 and 1971, kids. Do stay alert. Now then: the name Memphis. I expect you’re wondering how that came about. Gather round. I wanna tell you a story.