By drinking two ristrettos in twenty minutes, yesterday morning at the headquarters of the Trentotto brand, which invited him to Toulouse for a double birthday *, Alberto Alessi paid tribute to his origins. The inventor Bialetti on his mother’s side, the industrialist Alessi through his father, two names that still dominate the coffee maker departments of good shops. At the head of the Italian design brand that transforms everyday utensils into objects of desire, the elegant septuagenarian to deliver, in French, some trade secrets.

2,000 people are expecting at the grain hall, are you nervous?

Whether there are 20 people or 2000 is the same for me, I come to tell my story in the story of Alessi, the Italian design factory which is 100 years old today. Our job is to meet the needs, or rather the dreams of the public, with the best designers in the world, I know nearly 300. If you are a designer, we open the door to you while elsewhere it will remain closed .

Comment do you realize the door to the French Starck?

Designer Alessandro Mendini, a relative who worked with us for forty years, once told me “there is a young Frenchman, not very presentable, but he is great, you have to meet him”. This was done in the mid-1980s, thanks to a Franco-Italian operation set up with the Pompidou center, and on a selection of young architects, Starck, Portzamparc, Jean Nouvel. There was also Charlotte Perriand who kindly told me no, she was already over 80 and no longer wanted to draw. Nouvel created a service with a carafe with the fingerprints that was made later, Starck designed a kettle for us, which we made. We also asked him for a tray, but he didn’t do anything for two years… And one day, I received a placemat, like you find in trattorias, stained with tomato sauce. Above, he had drawn an octopus on the left which turned to the right into a juicer. We made it in cast aluminum and it has become an iconic product, Juicy Salif. Today we are working with other French people, the Bouroullecs, Pierre Charpin, or Pauline Deltour who was working on the new simplicity, unfortunately she has just died. [à l’âge de 38 ans].

Where is Alessi’s headquarters?

Alessi has existed since 1921 in northern Italy, on Lake Orta, a very special place to offer I have 12,000 books and documents. My father Carlo, in the 1930s, had drawn almost all the objects in the catalog, then he started to call on outside designers at the end of the war. I reinforced this practice when I joined the company in the 1970s. These glasses [il les ôte et tord les branches]…

The design is oriented a lot towards natural materials, do they inspire you?

It’s not our tradition, but we made a basket out of wood, another out of compressed hay… I have a theory about our position. If we draw a line between the possible, where the objects that the public understands and buys, and the impossible with risky objects are located, Alessi is always at the limit.

With failures?

What did not work was often what I preferred, for example the pepper mill by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, a marvel and a total failure.