Alessi (Italian company)

Alessi is a housewares and kitchen utensil company in Italy, producing everyday items from plastic and metal, created by famous designers.

From the 1990s onward, Alessi has been associated with the notion of "designer" objects — otherwise ordinary tools and objects executed as high design, particularly in a post-modern mode, from designers such as Philippe Starck. Many of the early memorable "designer kettles", "designer toothbrushes", "designer kitchenware", and so on were Alessi products, though competition in this product category has greatly increased since then.

Alessi was founded in 1921 by Giovanni Alessi. The firm began as a workshop in Valle Strona near Lake Orta in the Italian Alps near Switzerland. An area known for its tradition in making small objects of wood or metal for in the house and in the kitchen in general. Alessi started with producing a wide range of tableware items in nickel, chromium and silver-plated brass. The company’s intention was to produce hand-crafted items with the aid of machines. Design in the current sense of the term began when Carlo Alessi (born 1916), son of Giovanni, was named chief designer. Carlo was trained as an industrial designer. Between 1935 and 1945 he developed virtually all of the products Alessi produced. In 1945 he ascended to chief executive and designed the coffee service.

In the 1950s the company was under the leadership of Carlo Alessi. It was his brother Ettore Alessi who introduced the collaboration with external designers in 1955. With some architects, he designed a number of items which were created for the hotel needs. Through his intervention caused many individual objects, which were best-sellers, such as the historical series of wire baskets. One of the key designs of this period is the shaker from 1957 by Luigi Massoni and Carlo Mazzeri. This was designed in a series with an Ice bucket and Ice tongs as part of the Program 4 for the 11 triennale in Milan. This was the first time that the Alessi products got shown with manufactured goods. The 1950s were a difficult time to sell designer objects, as it was only a few years after World War II, and many people could not afford designer objects...

In 1970 Alberto Alessi was responsible for the third transformation of the company. Alessi was considered one of the "Italian Design Factories". In this decade under the leadership of Alberto Alessi the company collaborated with some design maestros like Achille Castiglioni, Richard Sapper, Alessandro Mendini and Ettore Sottsass. In the '70s Alessi produced the Condiment set (salt, pepper and toothpicks) by Ettore Sottsass, the Espressomaker by Sapper.

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