Alessi Cooks Up Its First Furniture Collection With Frying Pans As Inspiration

Italian houseware company Alessi is best known for its elegant and industrial take on everyday utensils, which much of its portfolio containing appliances such as toasters, espresso makers, decorative home goods, and cutlery. It’s now dipping its toes into furniture with a new collection that debuted at Milan Design Week.
 
Poêle Collection is a series of chairs, stools, and a coat stand that marries Alessi’s iconic contemporary and sleek design styles with furniture. The lineup was created in tandem with French industrial designer Philippe Starck.

Starck was behind one of the brand’s more controversial products, the Juicy Salif lemon squeezer from the 1990s. The kitchen utensil in question caused quite a stir among the masses as its design, which looked like a large and spindly spider, made it a less-than-useful item to juice lemons with.
 
Nevertheless, the new collection serves its purpose well, even if it was inspired by something rather unorthodox: frying pans. Poêle employs the same manufacturing process as the company’s stainless-steel cookware. The results are a series of furniture that looks like stylized pots and pans punctuated with sturdy wood legs and armrests. 

“The Poêle Chair started as a serious joke, with a sketch of a pan with legs and the great idea of adapting an existing high-technology to different purposes. The seat and back are inspired by a frying pan, with legs as handles, the Poêle Chair elegantly incarnates the most beautiful symptoms of human intelligence: humor and technology. Very much like my relationship to Alberto and Alessi.” Notes Starck.

This collaboration between Alberto Alessi and Starck has been 20 years in the making, and this pivot into furniture highlights a new direction for the brand, so says Alessi himself.
 
 
 
[via Dezeen and WWD, images via Alessi]