An Idea Borrowed From Laundry Day

As the story is usually told at Bialetti, Alfonso Bialetti got the idea for the Moka Express in 1933 while watching women in his hometown do laundry with an early steam washing machine — a sealed pot where boiling, soapy water was forced up a central pipe by pressure and rained back down over the clothes. Bialetti, who worked in aluminum manufacturing, looked at that mechanism and saw a coffee maker instead of a washer.

Photo: Bialetti — official product page

Eight Sides, One Reason

Swap the soapy water for boiling water and the wet clothes for ground coffee, and the same pressure-driven cycle applies: water heats in the bottom chamber, steam pressure pushes it up through a funnel packed with coffee, and it collects, brewed, in the top chamber. The pot's signature octagonal body wasn't purely stylistic either — the flat faces made it easier to grip while hot and easier to manufacture from cast aluminum than a rounded equivalent, at a moment when Bialetti was trying to keep the price low enough for ordinary households.

From Slow Seller to National Object

The Moka Express barely sold under Alfonso's ownership. It took his son Renato, who inherited the company after the war, to turn it into a household name — including putting a mustachioed cartoon of himself on the packaging, a logo Bialetti still uses. Today the design is functionally unchanged since 1933, sits in MoMA's permanent collection, and is estimated to be in the majority of Italian kitchens.

What the Moka Express Teaches About Everyday Kitchen Objects

• Borrow mechanisms from outside your category. The best solution to a kitchen problem isn't always found by looking at other kitchen tools.
• A recognizable silhouette outlasts trends. The octagonal body has never needed a redesign because it was never fashion-driven to begin with.
• Ritual objects earn their keep through repetition. Ninety years of daily use is the real review.

If you like objects built around a daily ritual, our Thermal Coffee Set works from the same instinct — double-wall stainless steel built specifically around the small, repeated act of making and drinking coffee.

The Bottom Line

Alfonso Bialetti didn't set out to design an icon — he set out to make coffee the way his neighbors already knew how to wash clothes. Ninety years and hundreds of millions of units later, that borrowed idea is still on stovetops everywhere.