Alfonso Bialetti () (17 June 1888– 5 March 1970) was an Italian engineer who became famous for manufacturing the Triplerapid Miracol 900 which he modified and sold as

Moka Express The moka pot is a stove-top or electric coffee maker that brews coffee by passing hot water driven by vapor pressure and Charles's law, heat-driven gas expansion through ground coffee. Named after the Yemeni city of Mocha, Yemen, Mocha, it was ...

coffeemaker A coffeemaker, coffee maker or coffee machine is a cooking appliance used to brew coffee. While there are many different types of coffeemakers, the two most common brewing principles use gravity or pressure to move hot water through coffee ...

in the 1950s. Designed in 1937 by Otello Amleto Spadini, the

coffee Coffee is a beverage brewed from roasted, ground coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content, but decaffeinated coffee is also commercially a ...

pot has been a style

icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic Church, Catholic, and Lutheranism, Lutheran churches. The most common subjects include Jesus, Mary, mother of ...

since the 1950s. While many variations of the Moka have been developed, including the Bialetti cow-printed Mukka Express (which makes

cappuccino Cappuccino (, ; from German ) is an espresso-based coffee drink traditionally prepared with steamed milk, including a layer of milk foam. Variations of the drink involve the use of cream instead of milk, using non-dairy milk substitutes ...

), the original remains a time-honoured classic. Bialetti was also the founder of Bialetti Industries, now an Italian kitchen-ware company. The Bialetti brand is now owned by Bradshaw International, which manufactures and sells Bialetti brand kitchen-ware.

The Bialetti Company

Bialetti first acquired his metal-working skills by working for a decade in the French

aluminium Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...

industry.Schnapp, Jeffrey T
"The Romance of Caffeine and Aluminum"
''

Critical Inquiry ''Critical Inquiry'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal in the humanities published by the University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Department of English Language and Literature (University of Chicago). While the topics and historica ...

'', Vol. 28, No. 1, 2001. Retrieved on 2005-10-27. By 1919 he had established his own metal and machine workshop in Crusinallo (his native

Piedmont Piedmont ( ; ; ) is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the northwest Italy, Northwest of the country. It borders the Liguria region to the south, the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions to the east, and the Aosta Valley region to the ...

) to make aluminium products: this was the foundation of the Bialetti company."History: 1919 – The Origins of Bialetti"
''

Bialetti Industrie S.p.A. Bialetti is an Italian brand of coffee machines, cookware, and small kitchen appliances founded by Alfonso Bialetti. Its most well-known product is the Moka pot line of stovetop coffeemakers. History Alfonso Bialetti first acquired his metal-w ...

''. Retrieved on 2005-10-27 He transformed his workshop – Alfonso Bialetti & C. Fonderia in Conchiglia – into a studio for design and production.

The Moka Express

Design

Bialetti completed his design for the aluminium Moka Express in 1950. It may also be referred to as a Moka, Moka pot, a Bialetti, a

percolator A coffee percolator is a type of pot used for the brewing of coffee by continually cycling the boiling or nearly boiling brew through the grounds using gravity until the required strength is reached. The grounds are held in a perforated metal ...

or a stove-top

, and in Italian as ''la Moka'', ''la macchinetta'' ("the little machine") or ''la caffettiera''. The blueprints for the Moka Express are on display in the London

Design Museum The Design Museum in Kensington, London, England, exhibits product, industrial, graphic, fashion, and architectural design. In 2018, the museum won the European Museum of the Year Award. The museum operates as a registered charity, and all fund ...

. Bialetti was probably heavily influenced by contemporary designers such as Hoffmann, Puiforcat, Genazzi and Henin; to a certain extent he copied and built upon their coffee-pot designs. The coffee pot's clean classic design with its symmetrical eight-faceted metallic body is easily recognisable—it is still manufactured today by Bialetti.Moka Express, Bialetti
/ref> Since its creation the Moka has become the world's most famous coffee pot and has been cited in the Guinness Book of World Records as well as in various essential design books. The use of aluminium to construct the body of the coffee pot was also a relatively new industrial concept as aluminium was not a traditional "domestic metal". Soon the material was to become more common in kitchens and the mid-1930s are considered to be the golden era in the production of aluminium products for the kitchen. The Bialetti design coupled with the use of the novel metal made the Moka pot stand out.

Development and marketing

The Moka was eventually to transform the Bialetti company into a leading Italian coffee-machine designer and manufacturer. Between 1934 and 1940 the humble Moka was only marketed locally – sold by Alfonso at the weekly markets in Piedmont. In these six years he only produced 70,000 units. By 2001 a total of 220 million units had been produced and to date the number has reached 330 million. During World War II the rising prices of coffee and aluminium stalled production of the Bialetti products. It was not until Renato, Alfonso's son, took over in 1946 that the Bialetti product line was narrowed down to a single product: the Moka Express. A huge multi-faceted marketing campaign was initiated by Renato. It incorporated television, billboards which saturated the streets of Milan and even the creation of a giant statue of the Moka Express coffee pot. Copy-cat designs were infiltrating the market by now and advertising turned out to be a key strategy in defining the success of the Moka and ensuring the popularity of the Bialetti brand. ''L'omino con i baffi'' – the Moka mascot – was based on a humorous cartoon doodle of Alfonso Bialetti's son Renato. The initial sketches and logo were created in 1953 by Paul Campani. By 1956 the Bialetti company had managed to construct a state-of-the-art factory in

Omegna Omegna (, , ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in the Italy, Italian region Piedmont, located about northeast of Turin and about southwest of Verbania at the northernmost point of Lago d’Orta and traversed ...

Social impact

Espresso machines prior to the Moka Express were large, expensive, and technically complicated. Few people kept them at home, so coffee-drinking was largely a public affair. The Moka Express, which was comparatively small, cheap, and easy to use, made it feasible for many more people to brew espresso at home. Over the rest of the 20th century, it gradually displaced other home coffee makers invented in the late 19th century, such as the Napoletana and the Milanese.

Personal life

Alfonso Bialetti is the grandfather of Alberto Alessi of Alessi (the famous Italian design house).

Notes

External links

Bialetti.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bialetti, Alfonso 20th-century Italian engineers Italian industrial designers 1888 births 1970 deaths Bialetti