Alessi is one of those companies which embodies a typical phenomenon of Italian industrial culture, namely that of "Italian Design Factories".

Since time immemorial, the Alessi family has been firmly established on Lake Orta. In this poor, narrow valley in the Italian Alps, close to Switzerland, a long-standing tradition in wood and metal handicraft has survived up to this day.

Within the Alessi company, design in the current sense of the term began to gain a foothold under Carlo Alessi, who drew on his training as an industrial designer in order to develop virtually all of the products which appeared in our catalogs between 1935 and 1945.

In the 1950s, Carlo Alessi became the corporate general manager, giving up altogether his activity as a designer and increasingly relying on the contributions of freelance designers, in accordance with a practice which was to become typical of all "Italian Design Factories".