A Bit of Bialetti

Rain Rain Rain ...... constant rain ... which meant that any attempt at photographing the Shropshire countryside was pretty much scuppered. Normally, I would say that there isn't such a thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing but in this case, when there's a misty drizzle resulting in a view no further than 100 feet in front of you and just a single, grey, dull cloud covering the entire sky, unless you have divine inspiration and perhaps a more dramatic landscape (such as the Lakes...), then you may as well tuck your camera up!

.... which is what I did until I returned to the cottage and became strangely stuck on this Italian Bialetti coffee maker which, set against the backdrop of the hob and the stainless steel background, I thought made for an attractive study in mono.

Bialetti came into being in 1919, when Alfonso Bialetti opened a workshop in Crusinallo (Verbania) to make semi-finished aluminium products. Motivated by an entrepreneurial spirit, he transformed his workshop - Alfonso Bialetti & C. Fonderia in Conchiglia - into a studio for the design and production of market-ready finished goods. Thanks to the brilliant intuition of Alfonso Bialetti, in 1933, the Moka Express saw the light of day and afterwards, thanks to the ambition of his son Renato, its Art Decò design was to revolutionize the way of making coffee at home and to immediately establish the company as one of the leading Italian manufacturers of coffee makers. Bialetti's brand awareness was further consolidated thanks to the significant advertising investments in Carosello - the advertising slot on early Italian TV - and communication focused on the image of the "Little man with a moustache" - created in the 1950s by Paul Campani. That became its symbol and is still part of the Group's trademark and on its products to this day.