You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Daily (Mon-Sun)
Daily Digest
Sign up for global news and reviews, a Wallpaper* take on architecture, design, art & culture, fashion & beauty, travel, tech, watches & jewellery and more.
Monthly, coming soon
The Rundown
A design-minded take on the world of style from Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss, from global runway shows to insider news and emerging trends.
Monthly, coming soon
The Design File
A closer look at the people and places shaping design, from inspiring interiors to exceptional products, in an expert edit by Wallpaper* global design director Hugo Macdonald.
To viewers of the Winter Olympics opening ceremony the army of stovetop coffee makers which danced on stage in colourful guises will not have gone unnoticed. The traditional Italian moka was heralded among other symbols of Italian culture, from popular children's book character Pinocchio to 16th century Renaissance paintings, rendered by actors dressed in bold, monochromatic costumes.
Meet the moka, Italy's legendary stovetop coffee maker
A Bialetti coffee maker showing the three essential elements of a moka
It's safe to say every Italian home has a moka coffee maker, also known as a caffettiera. And even if coffee machines have increased in popularity over the past decade or so, the classic stovetop coffee maker remains a go-to ritual for many Italians (and beyond).
How it works - the ingenious coffee maker features three essential elements: a pot that is filled with water, a filter for the ground coffee, and a top vessel. Once filled with water and coffee, the moka is placed on the stove and the heat creates pressure that allows the water to rise through the filter and erupt through a spout placed into the vessel (the noise of the coffee brewing is legendary in itself).
Moka, the story of an icon
Although inventions and prototypes featuring the moka brewing method were tested across Europe throughout the nineteenth century, it was Italian Alfonso Bialetti who in the 1930s popularised the coffee maker as we know it.
Bialetti had established a metal working workshop in Northern Italy in 1919 after training for over a decade across the border in French aluminium factories. The idea for the coffee maker as we know it came in the mid-1930s, thanks to a partnership between Bialetti and designer/inventor Otello Amleto Spadini. Bialetti spent the following several years engineering Spadini's design, and launched the moka (named after the city of Mokha in Yemen, a location leading coffee production worldwide), with a patent registered in 1946.
The design proved so popular that eighty years on, Bialetti still produces its Moka Express, and it hasn't changed: a testament to the enduring appeal of its intuition and utilitarian aesthetic.
The history of coffee maker design
Although Bialetti remains one of the leading brands in coffee maker design and production, over the years various designers, architects and companies have offered their interpretation of the legendary machine. Most notably, Bialetti's grandson Alberto Alessi has through his eponymous company revolutionised the look and popularity of the moka across discerning design enthusiasts, and has contributed to transforming it into a design icon in its own right.
It was Alberto Alessi who first invited some of the world's most celebrated architects to design kitchen tools, and his coffee makers, by the likes of Michele De Lucchi, Aldo Rossi and most recently Michael Anastassiades and David Chipperfield among others, are undoubtedly what put the moka firmly on the design agenda.
Marco Zanuso's Carmencita coffee maker for Lavazza, 1979
1979 was a turning point in coffee maker design, observes designer and design historian Giulio Iacchetti, who in 2019 curated an exhibition for Lavazza dedicated to the object's most imaginative design interpretations. 'That year was marked by two remarkable events: Marco Zanuso’s Carmencita moka, inspired by the advertisement for Lavazza Paulista coffee, and Richard Sapper’s 9090 coffee maker for Alessi,' he said introducing the exhibition. 'Both (...) have been milestones in the history of moka.'
But what makes the design of a caffettiera so appealing to designers and architects? 'The coffee maker isn't just an object or a machine, it's a true work of architecture,' wrote the late Italian architect Alessandro Mendini in 1979, in a text celebrating the object in its unique blend of aesthetic and functionality.
'Every great architect has attempted to design one, aiming to build a coffee maker just as he would like to build a tower before dying. It is about the mass quantification of a ritual and a delicious vice (...) exercised by means of an increasingly sophisticated and perfect machine-tool, which (...) now resembles a capsule satellite destined to land on the moon.'
A vintage espresso maker from the Accademia collection by Ettore Sottsass and Matteo Thun for Lagostina on the cover of Wallpaper* May 2023. 'Principles' table by OMA for UniFor, 'Gli Specchi di Dionisio' mirror by Ettore Sottsass, from Glas Italia
Some of the most notable versions of the object include the Accademia by Memphis designers Ettore Sottsass and Matteo Thun, from the 1980s, or Cini Boeri's Opera, for La Pavoni, from 1989 - both now rare collector's items. A wild moka design came courtesy of Gaetano Pesce, whose late 1980s design for Zani & Zani: characterised by an elaborate cast aluminium base and resin top, it featured an erupting volcano, symbolising the coffee-making function itself.
While Alberto Alessi's collection of coffee makers mostly featured ultra-functional versions of the design, he also worked on some more daring versions, such as artist Riccardo Dalisi's Coffee pot with heart and stars, an extravagant creative exercise informed by a traditional Neapolitan coffee pot (a different coffee machine that uses a drip brewing method), and featuring an array of stars framing the object.
Opera by Cini Boeri for La Pavoni
'Coffee is not just a drink, there is a ritual that takes place every time you make coffee with a moka: this way, the coffeemaker becomes an archetypal symbol, the representation of a ritual,' observed Iacchetti.
Representing a mix of daily rituals, familiar gatherings as well as design greatness, the traditional Italian coffee maker continues to shape the creative imagination as a symbol of design acuity, entrepreneurial vision and utilitarian functionality.
