Alessi
826 round wire basket (1948)Founded in 1921 by Giovanni Alessi, Alessi is a manufacturer of housewares and kitchen utensils, mostly known for their dreadful ‘designer’ objects. Alessi was one of the first to execute otherwise ordinary tools and objects as high design, so it is safe to say that most of the Alessi products are things you can easily do without.
However, in the 1940s and 1950s Alessi manufactured some timeless classics in their hotel and bar range. The Wire basket 826 is a variation on an age-old theme in the history of housewares: metal wire baskets. It was the first object to result from a period of research on bending metal wire that was conducted by the Alessi Technical Department. The baskets grew out to become archetypes in their category.
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