Alessi (Italian company)

In 1969 the company was under the leadership of Carlo Alessi.[1] It was his brother Luigi who introduced the collaboration with external designers in 1955. With some architects, he designed several items that were created for the hotel needs. He helped introduce many best-sellers, such as the historical series of wire baskets. From 1957 by Luigi Massaroni 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 as it was only a few years after World War II and many people could not afford to buy 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.

The 1980s marked a period in which Italian design factories had to compete with mass production. These movements had a different view on design, for the Italian design factories the design and therefore the designer was the most important part of the process while for the mass production the design had to be functional and easy to be reproduced.[2] Also in the 1980s, they changed their marketing image from factory to industrial research lab, a place for research and production. For Alessi the '80s are marked with some designs like the Two tone kettle by Sapper, their first cutlery set Dry by Castiglioni. Alessi collaborated with new designers like Aldo Rossi, Michael Graves, and Philippe Starck, who have been responsible for the some of Alessi's all time bestsellers like the kettle with a bird whistle by Graves.

Alessi faced increasing competition from other international manufacturers, especially in lower-cost products mass-produced for retailers such as Target Corporation and J. C. Penney.

In the 1990s, Alessi started to work more with plastics, at the request of designers who found it an easier material to work with than metal, offering more design freedom and innovative possibilities. The 1990s were marked by the theme "Family Follows Fiction", with playful and imaginative objects. Artists designing for this theme included Stefano Giovannoni and Alessandro Mendini, who designed Fruit Mama and the bestseller Anna G. Metal still remained a popular material, for example the Girotondo family by King Kong.

During the 2000s, Alessi collaborated with several architects for its "coffee and tea 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. These sets had a limited production of 99 copies. Another remarkable design in the 2000s is the Blow Up series by Fratelli Campana. The brothers played with form and shape to create baskets and other objects that look like they would fall apart when touched.

In 2006, the company reclassified its products under three lines: "A di Alessi", "Alessi", and "Officina Alessi". A di Alessi is more "democratic" and more "pop", the lower price range of Alessi. Officina Alessi is more exclusive, innovative, and experimental, marked by small batch production series and limited series.

Alessi products are on display in museums worldwide like Museum of Modern Art (New York), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, Pompidou Centre, and Stedelijk Museum Italy. A collaboration with the National Palace Museum of Taiwan produced a collection of various kitchenware products with Asian themes.[3]