BRAINS AND BEAUTY COMBINE IN FUNCTIONAL HOME FURNISHINGS
Italian design firm Alessi brings a modern esthetic to decor items
If you’re a sucker for good-looking things in your home that are equally functional, you’re no doubt familiar with Italian design company Alessi.
The Sun caught up with Alessi’s Canadian representative Laura Bulley, in town from Toronto, to discuss the brand’s new fall and winter collection, which displays Alessi’s signature modern esthetic, just-right Italian colour palette and innovative design.
The design-forward approach Alessi is known for is seen in its fall-winter line in its new Extra Ordinary Metal Collection, in which items designed by the likes of Abi Alice, Emma Silvestris and Jasper Morrison have been recreated using an “Etruscan granulation” technique, practised by goldsmiths in Mesopotamia in 2500 BC, Bulley says.
“We have these big sheets of brass, and then we are laser pinpointing them with 45,800 little pin points to create these little dimples on the top and the same number on the bottom,” says Bulley. The effect is that simple items, like bowls and trays, are made interesting with texture.
“We can do slick-looking stainless any old day,” says Bulley, “but the idea was to add some texture, and all of these pieces have also been coated with a polymer, so that means they’re all food safe. You wouldn’t dishwasher them, but you wouldn’t hesitate putting food in there.”
The spiralling pattern achieved in the Extraordinary Metal Collection reflects “the golden ratio,” Bulley says.
“You find it in nature,” she says, “like artichokes etc., it’s absolute symmetry. It’s very pleasing to the eye, so you’ll see that this golden ratio is existing in the individual pieces.” From textured brass to neon lights, Alessi is as modern as it is traditional. (Founder Giovanni Alessi launched the company in 1921.), The range of Girotondo lamps, for instance, are available in bright pink and green, and blue and white. These dimmable LED lamps feature the iconic Alessi Girotondo man — designed 30 years ago by Stefano Giovannoni and Guido Venturini — and are rechargeable through a small USB connector.
“They’re very fun,” Bulley says. “They have three different settings, and they will burn four to six hours depending what the setting is. They can be used outside. It’s LED, so you don’t have to worry about the plug: is it North American? Is it whatever? LED just makes life a little easier. They can get wet — no hurricanes — but definitely, they can get wet.”
Being cartoonish in esthetic, these lamps are more pop culture than childish, Bulley says, so they can be used in many different areas of the home.
“They don’t have to be in a kids’ room. They can be in an entranceway, or wherever,” she says.
At the launch of any new season, Bulley says, Alessi always adds a few new items to their Objets Bijoux collection, which she describes as being “very functional in design, but not intuitive when you look at them as to what they do.”
For fall and winter, the “golden pink” pieces include the popular tripod trivet, which looks something like rose-gold knuckle bones looped together with a fashionable piece of string, but are actually four small pieces that can be arranged, and rearranged, to keep dishes of varying size and shape from damaging your tabletop.
“We sell a lot of this piece,” Bulley says. “It’s a very fun piece, and I think it’s because people don’t know what the hell it is.”
A new piece in this collection is the charming Shot (sculptural hip flask) by Laura Polinoro LPWK for Alessi, in golden pink, with a surface that looks like liquid.
“It’s five and half ounces,” says Bulley. “What I love about it is it feels really nice in your hand, it has that little depression for your thumb. It’s good for males and females, and comes with a funnel, so you can fill it.”
Also new in Alessi’s fall-winter collection is Alba, a truffle slicer, named after the region in Northern Italy where the famed white truffles are harvested.
“It’s very much an item for the gourmand,” says Bulley. “Not everyone is cooking with truffles.”
This truffle slicer was designed by UN Studios, which beat out 14 other architects and designers in a competition run by Alberto Alessi and the White Truffle Society of Alba.
“It’s really ergonomic in your hand, and has that natural twist, which is very reminiscent of UN studio design,” says Bulley.