The Designer

Michael Graves

Born in Indianapolis, he teaches architecture in Princeton since 1962. His architectural works include the Portland Building and the Humana Building, the extension of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Newark Museum. He created the best-selling 9093 kettle for Alessi. Michael Graves died in 2015.

The company

Founded in 1921 as a ‘Workshop for the processing of brass and nickel silver sheet metal, with foundry’, Alessi has always stood out for the high quality of its products.

In almost a century of history, the company has gradually evolved to become one of the leading “Factories of Italian design’, capable of applying its expertise and excellence in design management to many different product types.

Open to change and international development, Alessi at the same time has a strong bond with the traditions and cultural background of its area and continues to be synonymous with handcrafted objects produced with the help of machines.

Alessigraphy: the geography of Alessi production

Since the Company’s foundation in 1921 the majority of Alessi products have been manufactured through the cold working of metals, a tradition that is kept alive today by the skilled workers at the Crusinallo plant in Omegna.

Over time, Alessi also began to work with many other materials, such as porcelain, glass, wood, and plastic… A specific production method was developed for each one. Even when production takes place outside the Crusinallo plant, Alessi’s guidelines guarantee the company’s original production quality standards, continuing to reconcile industrial technological complexity with an artisanal eye for detail.

The objects produced from the different materials are manufactured in various production plants across the world. They remain original Alessi objects in that they are conceived with the same design excellence and produced with the same attention to quality that sets the company’s products apart.