Alessi reimagined corkscrews and kettles. Now it’s turning to chairs
Alberto Alessi lifts the lid on the storied design company’s move into furniture, its “most beautiful fiasco” and his unpublished murder mystery. From the upcoming Design issue, out on July 28.
Alberto Alessi works from the kind of office in which most people would struggle to work at all.
On a bright summer day, the design impresario has drawn the shutters in his cluttered HQ just outside the northern Italian town of Omegna, on the tip of Lake Orta. In the semi-darkness lies a jumble of paintings, prints, teapots, ceramic statuettes, Pinocchio marionettes, paintbrushes, vials, books, mementos and a striking chess set with abstract Brancusi-like pieces. There’s barely an unoccupied space.
