Riccardo Dalisi coffee maker for Alessi - Italy 1980s

Designer: Riccardo Dalisi

Production: Alessi

Alessi S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of design objects, founded by Giovanni Alessi in 1921. The first objects designed date back to the mid-thirties, when Carlo Alessi, son of the founder, began his business within his father's company, and then took over the management in the fifties. Many of the products made by the company until 1945 were designed by Carlo; after that date he completely abandoned planning to devote himself exclusively to business management. Design, in the sense that it is currently given to this term, became the main component of Alessi's activity starting from the seventies when Alberto Alessi began collaborating with a series of external designers, such as Achille Castiglioni, Richard Sapper and Ettore Sottsass. Since the eighties, collaborations with the biggest names in Italian and international design have meant that the company's products are characterized by being the result of a poetic and expressive research, typical of the activity of a "laboratory operating in the field of applied arts ". This company policy can be traced back to the idea of craftsmanship that the company wants to pass on for consistency with its roots and with those creative and intellectual movements that, starting from the Arts and Crafts of the mid-19th century, had the aim of artistically redeveloping production. serial. The "Italian design factories", including Alessi, are the "spiritual heirs" of these movements. Among the designers who have collaborated with Alessi over the years are: Alessandro Mendini, Aldo Rossi, Ettore Sottsass, Richard Sapper, Achille Castiglioni, Stefano Giovannoni and Philippe Starck. In 2004 Alessi presented the Tea & Coffee Towers project operation, 20 tea and coffee sets designed by a group of international architects, including Greg Lynn, Gary Chang, MVRD, Tom Kovac, SANAA - Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa , David Chipperfield, William Alsop, Dezsö Ekler, Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito and Jean Nouvel. The company currently exports 65% of its production to 60 different countries.

Time: 1980s

1980s

Main essence: Walnut

Walnut wood comes from the plant whose botanical name is juglans regia , probably originally from the East but very common in Europe. Light or dark brown in color, it is a hard wood with a beautiful grain, widely used in antique furniture. It was the main essence in Italy throughout the Renaissance and later had a good diffusion in Europe, especially in England, until the advent of mahogany. It was used for solid wood furniture and sometimes carvings and inlays, its only big limitation is that it suffers a lot from woodworm. In France it was widely used more than anything else in the provinces. In the second half of the eighteenth century its use decreased significantly because mahogany and other exotic woods were preferred.

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