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player ready...The ‘9091’ kettle, designed in 1983 for Italian housewares company Alessi, is a wonder to behold: the stainless steel, mirror-polished body; the scalloped polyamide handle; and — the piece de resistance — a melodic brass spout with two differently pitched pipes. No high, shrill whistle here: Like an approaching locomotive or (in the words of Alessi president Alberto Alessi) “the sound of the steamers and barges that ply the Rhine,” it produces a pleasant harmony of “E” and “B” when the steam exits.
German-born industrial designer Richard Sapper is the genius behind the whimsical 9091. In a short movie produced by Dezeen magazine, Alessi recalls approaching Sapper about the project: “He told me, ‘It’s not enough for me to design just a beautiful kettle. What I want is to design a kettle that is multi-sensorial — not only (pleasing to) the touch or the eyes, but also the ears.”
Sapper passed away on December 31 in Milan and is being remembered for several iconic designs: the Tizio table lamp, the IBM ThinkPad, and the 9090 stovetop espresso maker — Alessi’s very first kitchen product. His prototypes were sleek, inventive and exact. “Together with Ettore Sottsass, Achille Castiglioni and Alessandro Mendini, Richard Sapper (was) for me a beloved maestro, unequalled for his surgical precision in translating the presence of his imagination into real industrial products close to perfection,” Alessi effused in a January 5th statement.
He’ll be the first to admit — as do passionate customer reviewers on Amazon — that the $330 9091 isn’t perfect. The water boils as it should, but sometimes the whistles malfunction (to the point Alessi now ships with replacement whistles) and the plastic handle can get quite hot. But, quirks aside, the designer kettle will carry on as a classic. As one Amazon reviewer put it, after detailing various drawbacks: “All that said, I still love it. It’s beautiful. I love the train whistle. And, well, it’s beautiful.”
More info. at store.alessi.com
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