Since I started my “house setting up” I have changed about 7/8 of it; along the way I removed furniture reducing in the end everything to large sofas and large tables. The pieces that on the contrary continued to increase were the funny objects of everyday utility made by Alberto Alessi and his designers.
Who has not at home even one piece of this company that has changed our way of living the kitchen, but also any other environment of our homes? Pino the funnel with the long nose on its face so round, smooth colorful of the better-known Pinocchio, Merdolino the toilet brush with the shape of the classic clay pot and green shrub everything in plastic, the elegance of Fruitscape, the fruit bowl in steel that recalls the harmonious desert dunes. And the jewelry… like the necklace Breath On The Neck that seems to be hanging on the neckline so delicate and light.
Alberto Alessi, I see you as the Willy Wonka of design…
Thank you! I loved the character in the interpretation of Johnny Depp, it is true that we have some traits in common…
How did you succeed in attracting world-renowned architects and designers to produce a… corkscrew?
Look: the idea of involving great authors in the design of household objects is not coming to me first. Not to mention a certain Benvenuto Cellini that around the middle of the sixteenth century has devoted his talents to salt/pepper shakers, I have to remember that Applied Arts in everyday life are a theme present since thousands of years in human history. Today, the phenomenon of “Italian Design Factories”, born in postwar years, is alive, even vibrant, and I think Alessi is a fine example.
Plastic and steel…
Even if today the productive sector of the home of Omegna is almost extinguished, in Alessi Company we continue to be metallurgists. Our ambiguous halfway position between trade and industry of mass production has allowed us to develop and consolidate a state of the art of cold working metals that makes our products recognizable. Other materials, including plastics, arrived much later, in the 80s and 90s, and represented openings to new technologies and, above all, towards new expressive possibilities.
The elegance, however, is always present in your objects…
I hope so! The elegance (and the beauty) can still save the world!
Alberto Alessi 10/09/13
President of Alessi SpA