Alessi Farfalla Nutcracker, Mirror Polished Steel

Alessi’s Farfalla nutcracker was created by Italian designer legend Enzo Mari in the 1990s and named after the Italian word for “butterfly” as a reference to the shape of its handle. The playful yet strictly functional design of the metallic nutcracker is an excellent example of Mari’s design philosophy: everything superfluous has been stripped away to make clear the object’s purpose, raison d’être.

The Alessi Values Collection was launched to celebrate the centennial of the famous Italian design house. The tenth part of the collection is called Thingness – the word refers to the kind of design that captures the essence of an object by underlining the movement or action for which the item was designed in the first place. Although Farfalla was conceived at the end of the 1990s and only put into production in 2021, it is truly the epitome of such design.