History
Alessi was founded in 1921 to produce crafted products in metal for eating and drinking, by Giovanni Alessi. In 1935, Carlo Alessi (born 1916), son of Giovanni, was named chief designer. In 1945 he ascended to chief executive and designed the coffee service Bombé, an industrial piece manufactured in four sizes. That same year Carlo's younger brother, E Alessi, joined the company as a technician.
By the 1980s, Alberto Alessi took over the management of Alessi and launched the Alessi company into the design decade through collaborations with designers and architects such as Alessandro Mendini, Ettore Sottsass, Richard Sapper, and Achille Castiglioni. In 2004 Alessi launched the 'Tea & Coffee Towers', with a new generation of architects such as Wiel Arets, Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito, Tom Kovac, Greg Lynn, MVRDV, Jean Nouvel, and UN Studio.
Among the best known of the company's product range are Richard Sapper's kettle with a two-tone whistle, Michael Graves' kettle with the bird shaped whistle, Massimo Giacon's Mr Suicide, and Philippe Starck's playful three-legged Juicy Salif citrus squeezer.
In 2006, the company reclassified its products under three lines: A di Alessi (products with lower price points), Alessi (the main collection) and Officina Alessi (the most experimental and limited edition pieces). 2006 also saw the opening of Alessi's first New York City flagship store in SoHo.
Another notable collection is the collaboration with the National Palace Museum of Taiwan, a collection of various kitchenware products with
Read more about this topic: Alessi (company)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)