The Romance of Caffeine: Living La Vida Moka
Scene from Martin Scorsese’s,”The Irishman,” with Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Domenick Lombardozzi and the Moka Pot Express.
Can you think of a coffee maker that is as humble, iconic, and ubiquitous as the Moka Pot?
The moka pot is a symbol of Italy: of postwar ingenuity and global culinary dominance. It is in the Museum of Modern Art, the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and other temples to design. It is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s most popular coffee maker, and was for decades commonplace to the point of ubiquity not only in Italy but in Cuba, Argentina, Australia, and the United States.
In 1918 Alfonso Bialetti returned from France where he had been working in aluminum for the past 10 years. Aluminum production had been around since the late 1880’s but it hadn’t yet been developed to meet exacting standards.
By the 1950s Italian Designers had access to all those manufacturing resources that were made to help the war effort, plus all of that experienced labor - and a growing middle class - it was the perfect time for a futuristic looking product like the Moka Pot to find its market.
As of 2016, the New York Times notes that over 90 percent of Italian homes had one. It became so iconic that Renato Bialetti, when he died in early 2016, was actually buried in a large replica of the moka pot.
Sources
Nosowitz, D. (n.d.). The Humble Brilliance of Italy's Moka Coffee Pot - Atlas Obscura. Retrieved December 6, 2019, from https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-humble-brilliance-of-italy-s-moka-coffee-pot.
Moka pot. (2019, November 27). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moka_pot.
