In 1898 Luigi Bezzera filed for the first patent of an “espresso machine”. Although technologically the machine would brew coffee at very low pressure (below 1 bar.) and real “espresso” coffee would arrive 40 years later, what Bezzera initiated was the fashion of machines to prepare one coffee at a time, "expressly made for you", hence the word "espresso".

In his case the machine was a vertical, metallic, steam-powered cylinder. Shiny, glittering, and potentially lethal, too - as often these table-top steamers would explode. These machines appeared for the first time in public at the Milan Expo in 1906 and from then onwards they became a semantic signal indelibly associated with espresso coffee, or coffee “expressly made for you”. Tall shiny totems, these machines became a magnet of attraction for the crowds frequenting bars and coffee-houses.

Now espresso machines don't exlode anymore, and have long lost that vertical shape.

TuTTOespresso with Angelo Micheli has decided to re-interpret this one-century long tradition vertical rockets.

Angelo Micheli also loved the idea of concentrating his attention on the upper part of the machine, more precisely the very tip of the cylinder, which used to be (in the early XX century tradition) the area where these early pioneers of coffee machines had concentrated their aesthetic ambitions.

As opposed to the finishing touches used a century ago (eagles, peacocks, swans, Hercules holding the world, wings of all sorts, etc.), Micheli has decided to merge the functional and the esthetics aspects in one continuum, allowing further more the user of the machine to creatively add her or his own touch to the overall result.

That is the reason why the “tree of the awakenings" towers this XXI-century machine, aptly named Totem: it shakes the formal sobriety of the lower part of the machine with a strong aesthetic element which can also be used for hanging cups of different colors and sizes to create different visual effects literally “over the top”.




Architect Angelo Micheli, born at Crotta d'Adda (Mantova, Italy) in 1959, has worked since the mid-Eighties as a partner of Michele De Lucchi studio, in Milano. His clients have included GlassDesign, Mandarina Duck, Pelikan, Poste Italiane and many others. He is also a painter, writer and sculptor.