Oggetti e Progetti: 30 Years of Alessi
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The stainless-steel Fruit Bowl 370, produced in 1952 by the Ufficio Tecnico Alessi, the company’s design hub. The bowl is still in production today, and its inclusion in the exhibition suggests a relationship between the bowl’s earlier, mid-century lines to later Alessi forms. -
Designer Richard Sapper, born in Munich in 1932 and a designer of ships and watches, executed a bold-lined sketch of an espresso machine for Alessi in 1978. -
Sapper’s resulting stacked, three-piece espresso machine, in stainless steel, is now in the permanent collection at MoMA, gifted by Alessi to the museum. -
Different variations of the espresso machine are abstracted by Sapper’s wooden models of the 1978 design. -
Pritzker Prize–winning Italian architect Aldo Rossi (1931–1997), who designed among many other buildings the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht, sketched his La Conica espresso machine (1980–1983) in 1984 as a haven for children returning home from school. -
Introduced four years after La Conica, Rossi’s La Cupola espresso maker borrowed very literally from his background as an architect. The sketch of La Cupola, from 1987, shows the piece as a purely architectural element among its classical, inspirational brethren. -
The 9093 kettle, conceived by architect Michael Graves in 1985, was the first item by an American to be included in Alessi’s catalogue. With its telltale ’80s Deco-revival accents and bird whistle, the kettle remains Alessi’s best-selling item. -
A holiday gift from Michael Graves to company head Alberto Alessi in 1995, this original sketch denotes 750,000 sales of the 9093 kettle. -
Designer Riccardo Dalisi, born in Potenza in 1931, anthropomorphized samples of his Neapolitan coffee maker, finished in 1987 after nine years (and 200 prototypes) in the making. The concept for his “Ricerca Napoletana” (“return to Neapolitan”) is said to draw on historical, anthropological and poetic sources, and evokes the classic, pre-1950s stovetop drip-brew coffee maker. -
Juan Navarro Baldeweg, born in Santander, Spain, in 1939, almost completely abstracted his tea and coffee set for Alessi in a 2003 sketch. In reality, each piece of the service, produced the same year, is surrounded by multicolored laser-cut metal. Of the set, Mendini remarked that its lines deal with “lights and shadows, projections and surfaces, based on the abstraction of informal calligraphies.” -
Appearing as a line drawing of a fruit basket, then crude cells seen from above, this sketch by Kazuyo Sejima and Rue Nishizawa of SANAA depicts their Alessi tea and coffee service in the simplest terms. The actual set reads as silver bubbles or fruit, each lid topped by small “stems” of silver. Mendini calls it “an unlikely basket of high and subtle poetry.” -
Sejima and Nishizawa, who designed the 21st Century Museum in Kanazawa, Japan, and the New Museum in New York, drew their tea and coffee towers as cartoonish sets of large and small tea and coffee pots.
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The 9090
Alessi—In the 1970s, Alessi invested $300,000 to develop its first cooking appliance: a stovetop espresso maker by Richard Sapper.
Alessi: Ethical and Radical
Surveying a series of milestone Alessi collaborations from 1955 to the present, this exhibition focuses on Alessi’s projects with Ron Arad, the Campana Brothers, Achille Castiglioni, Michael Graves, Greg Lynn, Alessandro Mendini, Ettore Sottsass, Philippe Starck, Robert Venturi and others. On view will be 150 objects, drawings, historic factory photographs, and videos that document the achievements of the family-owned company’s projects.
Tea Kettle
Designed by Michael Graves for Alessi in 1985, this water kettle is Alessi's best-selling item.
Time for Tea
Though we love (read: need) our morning coffee at Dwell, we're also great fans of tea. From hip tea lounges to tea-flavored ice cream to green tea supplements, it's clear that this culturally significant beverage has gone mainstream Stateside. And whether you go in for oolong or Earl Grey, we've rounded up a selection of some of the best modern tea products. (Still prefer a cup of Joe? Check out our favorite products for coffee lovers.)
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