--- title: "The Bialetti Moka Express Has Barely Changed Since 1933" url: https://quietmenace.com/design/bialetti-moka-express-history/ author: Quiet Menace Editors section: Design published: 2026-11-02 updated: 2026-11-02 topics: Industrial Design, Heritage Brands --- # The Bialetti Moka Express Has Barely Changed Since 1933 > An eight sided aluminum pot from a foundry town in Piedmont put coffee on Italian stoves. Its story is simple to tell and surprisingly hard to pin down. In 1919 a metalworker named Alfonso Bialetti opened a small workshop in Crusinallo, a hamlet of Omegna in Piedmont, to make semi finished aluminum goods. He had spent years in the aluminum industry in France and came home with a trade in a metal that most kitchens did not yet use. Fourteen years later, in 1933, the workshop produced a coffee pot. It had an eight sided body, a black handle and a small lid with a knob, and it is still on sale today in almost exactly the same form. Bialetti's own [history page](https://www.bialetti.co.nz/pages/history-heritage) dates the Moka Express to that year and calls it the beginning of the brand. ## A washtub and a coffee pot The best known origin story involves laundry. In the version the Italian news site [Il Post](https://www.ilpost.it/2013/08/21/moka-bialetti-caffe/) calls the most popular and credible, Bialetti watched women washing clothes in a tub with a central pipe. As the water heated, it rose through the pipe and spilled hot soapy water back over the washing. Turn that upside down and put ground coffee in the way, and you have the moka. The principle was not new. Steam driven coffee makers had been patented in Europe since the early 19th century, and Samuel Parker in England patented a tabletop version in 1833. What Bialetti added was a cheap, compact, household object made in a modern material. Il Post counts four aluminum parts, a replaceable gasket and a Bakelite handle. The working parts are a boiler at the bottom, a funnel shaped filter for the coffee and a collector on top. Water in the boiler heats, pressure builds and pushes it up through the grounds into the top chamber. The result is strong, but it is not espresso. A moka brews at roughly 1 to 2 bar of pressure, against the 9 bar standard for espresso, according to the [moka pot's Wikipedia entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moka_pot). The octagonal body was specified in the original patent, Il Post reports. The facets made the pot easy to grip and gave a humble aluminum object the look of something cut and polished. The name came from Mokha, the port in Yemen once famous for its coffee. ## Renato and the little man with the moustache For its first years the Moka Express was a local product. Alfonso sold it himself at markets and fairs in Piedmont. Then the war stalled production, as the prices of coffee and aluminum rose. The coffee pot became a national object only after Alfonso's son Renato came home from imprisonment in Germany. He took over in 1946, narrowed the company's range to the Moka Express alone and spent heavily on advertising, in newspapers, on radio and on early Italian television. In 1956 a giant moka stood at the Milan trade fair. Bialetti's new factory could turn out 18,000 pots a day, about 4 million a year. The campaign needed a face, and in 1953 it got one, the omino coi baffi, a cartoon of a little man with a moustache. Accounts differ on who drew him. Il Post credits the animator Paul Campani. The Milan business daily [Il Sole 24 Ore](https://en.ilsole24ore.com/art/storia-bialetti-boom-moka-bilanci-rosso-AEXsSNXG) says Renato created the symbol, and Wikipedia says it was Campani's caricature of Renato himself. From 1957 to 1977 the little man appeared on Carosello, the nightly ten minute advertising slot on Italian national television. He is still part of the logo. ![Three Bialetti moka pots and round coffee filters scattered on a cracked concrete surface](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1788119051630-4b4e9c8e7546?w=1600&h=1067&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop) *Bialetti pots of different sizes, each with the little man with the moustache printed on the side. Photo by cafeconcetto on Unsplash* ## Three sources, three numbers For a product this famous, the basic facts are oddly unsettled. We set the main accounts we read side by side. The comparison is ours. | Question | Il Post (2013) | Il Sole 24 Ore (2018) | Wikipedia | |---|---|---|---| | Who invented it | Alfonso Bialetti, 1933 | Alfonso Bialetti, 1933 | Alfonso, though one entry credits a 1937 design by Otello Amleto Spadini | | Early output | About 1,000 a year, late 1930s to early 1940s | 10,000 a year, 1936 to 1940 | 70,000 in total, 1934 to 1940 | | Who made the omino | Paul Campani | Renato Bialetti, 1953 | Campani, from a doodle of Renato, 1953 | | Total made | About 300 million | About 300 million, an estimate | 330 million | Spread over the six or seven years in question, Wikipedia's 70,000 works out to roughly 10,000 to 12,000 pots a year, which agrees with Il Sole 24 Ore. Il Post's figure is ten times lower. The Spadini attribution appears in one English language entry and not in the company's own history or either Italian newspaper account we read. What every source agrees on is the year 1933, Alfonso's workshop and Renato's marketing. And at 18,000 pots a day, the postwar factory needed about 222 working days to make its 4 million a year, by our arithmetic, which is consistent with a factory running an ordinary working year. ## After the family Sales slowed from the 1970s and the family sold the business. In 1993 Bialetti merged with Rondine Italia to form Bialetti Industrie, based in Brescia, and the company listed on the stock exchange in 2007. The Crusinallo plant closed in 2010, and by 2013 production was split between Italy, Romania and Turkey. In 2018 the company went to court in Brescia to restructure its debts. In April 2025, according to Wikipedia, the Luxembourg based fund Nuo Capital agreed to buy a 78.567 percent stake. The pot outlasted all of it. It sits in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Triennale Design Museum in Milan, alongside lamps such as the [Castiglioni brothers' Arco](https://quietmenace.com/design/castiglioni-arco-lamp/). It also fits the test in [Dieter Rams's ten principles](https://quietmenace.com/design/dieter-rams-ten-principles/), as little design as possible, better than most objects built to illustrate them. Alfonso's grandson is Alberto Alessi, of the Alessi design house, which seems fitting. ## Using one well Buy the size you will fill, because a moka works best full. Fill the boiler to just below the valve, fill the funnel with coffee and level it, and use a medium heat. Take it off the flame as soon as it starts to gurgle, because that sound means steam is now pushing through the grounds and turning the coffee bitter. Wash it with water only, never in the dishwasher. For more objects that have not needed to change, see the whole [Design section](https://quietmenace.com/design/) and our [industrial design hub](https://quietmenace.com/topics/industrial-design/). --- Filed under: [Industrial Design](https://quietmenace.com/topics/industrial-design/), [Heritage Brands](https://quietmenace.com/topics/heritage-brands/) Hero image: Photo by Thomas Murphy on Unsplash (Unsplash License)