A very quick and intense project with Alessi to achieve a low-cost range of everyday pots and pans. We didn’t have time to worry too much about shape, and in this case function had priority. Somehow the result is even more pleasing for its no-nonsense approach to making practical cooking equipment. It’s certainly one of the more serious projects we have done and the Alessi input gave us plenty to think about. In meetings with them it was amusing to note how each of us discussed cooking as if we were professional chefs! The graphics for the packaging were done by Charlie Smith, and somewhere along the way Alessi sent us some American saucepan packaging as samples. On the package was a chef endorsing the product with some facile statement, and yet it was undeniably effective. Remembering that inside us all there’s a professional chef, we invented the chef’s hat logo and the phrase ‘Cooks as good as it looks’.
Extract from Everything but the Walls by Jasper Morrison (Lars Müller Publishers, 2006)
Kitchenware
