Museo Alessi

The Alessi Museum preserves the design history of the Italian housewares company through a collection of more than 25,000 artefacts, including prototypes, moulds and sketches. Conceived by Alessandro Mendini in 1998, it is located at the company’s site in Crusinallo di Omegna.

Why it matters

The museum documents design as a process, preserving prototypes, drawings, moulds and objects from Alessi’s history. The company’s products are represented in more than fifty museum collections worldwide, including MoMA, the Centre Pompidou and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The archive places industrial design and the culture of the household within the history of the Cusio region.

What to notice

The collection spans prototypes, out-of-catalogue objects, moulds, designer installations, graphic and design documents, photographs, books and catalogues. Sketches and working drawings show how ideas developed before becoming finished products. Alessandro Mendini conceived the museum in 1998 as a way to organize and interpret the company’s design memory.

Context and history

The museum was conceived in 1998 by Alessandro Mendini, whose collaboration with Alessi shaped the company’s design identity. Curator Francesca Appiani oversees the collection at the company’s Crusinallo site in Omegna. The Alessi Museum is a founding member of Museimpresa, the association of Italian company museums and archives. Its collection supports research into twentieth- and twenty-first-century design, and objects from the archive have been lent to institutions internationally.