Italian design Italian furniture include Zanussi's rigorous, creative and streamlined washing machines and fridges, the "New Tone" sofas by Atrium, and most famously the innovative post-modern bookcase, made by Ettore Sottsass for the Memphis Group in 1981, inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again". The bookcase became a huge cultural icon and design event of the 1980s. Modern Italian design has changed the meaning of style and elegance and many interior designers use Italian or Italian inspired pieces in their work. Stunning examples are found in the ranges by Slide Designs, Belta Frajumar and Lumen
Ettore Sottsass named Sottsass artistic director and gave him a high salary, but Sottsass refused. Instead he created the Studio Olivetti independently, working Olivetti and became instantly the most creative international center of design associating research with creation and industrial strategy. The feeling that his creativity would have been stifled by corporate work is documented in his 1973 essay "When I was a Very Small Boy". In 1968, the Royal College of Art in London granted Sottsass an honorary doctoral degree. Throughout the 1960s, Sottsass travelled in the US and India and designed more products for Olivetti, culminating in the bright red