Alessi

Alessi is the most famous housewares company in Italian design. It is based in Crusinallo, part of Omegna on Lake Orta in Piedmont, and for a hundred years it has turned everyday objects such as coffee makers, kettles, trays and corkscrews into small icons designed by architects and designers from all over the world.

A metalworking shop

The company was founded in 1921 by Giovanni Alessi as a workshop with a foundry, in a valley with an old tradition of wood and metal working. In its early years it made tableware in nickel-plated, chrome-plated and silver-plated brass. From the mid-1930s his son Carlo Alessi designed most of the products: his last design, before he took over the management of the company, was the Bombé tea and coffee service of 1945, still in the catalogue today. After the war, with Carlo and his brother Ettore, the workshop became a true stainless-steel industry.

The “design factory”

The turning point came in 1970, when Carlo's son Alberto Alessi joined the company. Alberto wanted Alessi to be a research laboratory in the applied arts, an heir to the Arts and Crafts movement, and he brought in great outside designers: Achille Castiglioni, Ettore Sottsass, Alessandro Mendini and above all Richard Sapper, who designed the 9090 espresso maker (1979) and the kettle with a two-tone whistle (1983). In 1982 Castiglioni designed Dry, the first cutlery made by Alessi.

The years of the icons

In the 1980s and 1990s Alessi became one of the symbols of Postmodernism. Some of its objects became world famous:

• the 9093 kettle by Michael Graves (1985), with the little red bird that whistles when the water boils;
• the Juicy Salif lemon squeezer by Philippe Starck (1990), an aluminium spider that is more sculpture than tool;
• Mendini's Anna G corkscrew (1994), a smiling figure that raises its arms as the screw turns, the first of a whole family of objects;
• the cheerful, colourful plastic objects of Stefano Giovannoni and the pierced steel Girotondo line by King Kong (1989).

In the early 2000s the Tea & Coffee Towers project asked architects such as Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito, Jean Nouvel and MVRDV to rethink the tea and coffee service in limited editions.

Alessi today

The company is still run by the family, now in its third generation. Production is divided into three lines: Alessi, the historic brand; A di Alessi, with more affordable objects; and Officina Alessi, for limited and experimental editions. Since 2020 Alessi has been a benefit corporation and a certified B Corp. Many of its objects are on show in museums such as MoMA in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Sources

• Wikipedia – Alessi (it)
• Wikipedia – Alessi (en)
• Alessi – sito ufficiale