The article aims to reconstruct a path within the research of Ettore Sottsass jr., an architect,
artist and designer who, since the early stages of his career, dedicated a particular attention
to the theme of the decorated surface of the objects and found since the Fifties an
unexplored potential in a new material, the plastic laminate. Turning his gaze to the mass
production, Sottsass started from the production of a few first prototypes and reached an
international affirmation with the new iconographies of Memphis in the 1980s: nowasays
his projects represent significant case studies for reflecting on the expressive and communicative
possibilities of the “skin of objects”.