Coffee Entrepreneur Renato Bialetti Gets Buried in the Espresso Maker He Made Famous

At OC HQ you will find two Bialet­ti espres­so mak­ers on the stove–one small, the oth­er large–and togeth­er they pow­er us through the day. Invent­ed by Alfon­so Bialet­ti in 1933, the octag­o­nal, Art Deco-designed cof­fee mak­er even­tu­al­ly became a sta­ple in Ital­ian homes (90% of them), thanks to his son Rena­to, who died last week at the age of 93. A savvy mar­keter to the end, Bialet­ti went to the grave with his prod­uct, buried, as he was, in an espres­so mak­er that dou­bled as an urn. All in all, I can’t think of much bet­ter ways to spend eter­ni­ty.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul Gia­mat­ti Plays Hon­oré de Balzac, Hopped Up on 50 Cof­fees Per Day

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)