Whistling kettle by Richard Sapper

Designed in 1983 by German designer Richard Sapper for Alessi, the ‘Whistling Kettle’ has become iconic in a time when products were moving away from mechanical ideas to more electrical manufacturing.

James Dyson wrote about the product… “Richard Sapper’s kettle for Alessi seduced us all in the early eighties. The top half is a perfect polished hemisphere recreating a fish eye lens. While at bottom the copper base conducts heat very efficiently. But most charming is the nostalgic whistle. Its pipes are pitched at E and B, just like an Amtrak train’s two-tone whistle.”

“Richard Sapper at Alessi wanted the new whistle on his kettle to sound like the whistle on the river steam boats he remembered from his youth. They spent eighteen months working on it and after eighteen months, having never quite got it perfect, they canned the project. Alessi don’t settle for second best. Did the kettle do it’s job – yes. Did the kettle heat water to a temperature suitable for making tea & coffee – yes. Did it look good sitting in your kitchen – yes. It was fine in every sense but it wasn’t perfect – it wasn’t what the designer wanted.” Taken from passionateaboutfilm.com

In 1979, when Alberto Alessi took over the management of his family’s Italian metal goods manufacturing company, he resolved to inject his passion for modern design into the business, originally established in 1921.

Alberto Alessi said “we came up with a kind of cultural-theoretical manifesto that strived to establish a new commercial culture that offered mass consumers truly artistic items at an affordable price”.

“Giving form a meaning” is how Sapper expresses his methodological approach to design, thereby distancing himself from the tradition of German functionalists with their leitmotif of ‘form follows function’.

He says “as designers we see our responsibility as being to create things which improve life and the future for everyone”.

This kettle is just one of the many critically-acclaimed products designed by Sapper, but is certainly one of my favourites for its playful nature and for bringing out the children in all of us… hence the images above.