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Coffeepot & Co
Italians say “it is easy like drinking coffee”, but actually a few really know how we started to appreciate the taste of a cup of hot-steaming coffee. Early coffee was prepared with fruits, including its peel, and only later we started to make coffee from green coffee beans. But probably coffee beans would not be roasted until 1700, but even after this stage, during the brewing process, coffee beans would not be ground before being boiled. The following step in the preparation of coffee was then to reduce roasted coffee beans into a powdered substance with the use of a mortar or pestle, and finally to put this powder into the boiling water and to drink the brew so obtained, including the coffee grounds left in the bottom.
It was around 1500 that the Turkish “ibrik” appeared into the Western world, with its odd conic form and a long transversal handle. In this particular pot, coffee was brewed by boiling water and coffee ground together. But, when coffee was ready to be poured into the cup, the “ibrik” retained much of the coffee grounds deposited in the bottom. At around mid of the Seventeenth century, the so-called “boiler of Baghdad” started to include a cap, a bulb-like basement, a curved handle and a characteristic spout. In this period, coffee arrived into Italy from the Middle East and its household preparation in Italy started to copy the procedure used in those countries, but here using a tinplated pot. The result was a rather dense and sour beverage which required a larger and expensive quantity of coffee. These characteristics certainly did not contribute to spread the consumption of this new product in the very beginning.
A substantial improvement took place when the “brewing method” arrived into France in the late 1700. Here, coffee ground was put into a small cloth bag which was immersed into the boiling water for brewing. This represented the first step towards the creation of the French filter, which has lived on up to our times with obvious modifications. The French filter may be considered as the link between the Turkish “ibrik” (or “the European coffeepot”) and the following coffee machines and brewers of 1900.
Coffeepot and coffee machine
In everyday language, people often confuse the word “coffeepot” with the word “coffee machine”. A “coffeepot” is a pure and simple container used to serve coffee, which is brewed elsewhere. In the case of a filter or filter pot, it does not autonomously complete the cycle of preparation, as the water must be heated into another container and then poured into the coffeepot for brewing and, finally, for service into the coffee cups. A “coffee machine” generally carries out the entire cycle of preparation in a completely automatic way, including the process of water heating with the use of an electric or spirit burner. For this reason, a coffee machine is generally constituted by numerous and complex parts.
1800: A creative century
During the Nineteenth century, inventors designed, patented, manufactured, modified, and marketed all that could be possibly conceived with regard to the methodologies and techniques used to extract the “black beverage” from grown coffee beans and the relevant coffee machines for household usage. As a matter of fact, in the following century no innovations were introduced, apart from the application of the electric power as heat source.
Throughout Europe, from the early decade of 1800, dozens of engineers, tinsmiths and silversmiths as well as non-professional inventors and housewives competed with each other in designing the desired “perfect machine”, which had to assure an easier preparation for all types of users. The required coffee machine had to be reliable, but also equipped with a fashionable design and an automatic functioning system, possibly autonomously powered. In their attempts, the first “pioneers” of the coffee industry applied and experimented various principles of liquid state physics, thermodynamics, vacuum and steam state physics and hydrostatics.
How many ways of preparing coffee!
Pump percolators
The first man to propose in 1819 in London a pump percolator was a certain Mr. Jones, but as early as 1837, in France, Mrs. Richard presented a percolator with a water recirculating system. This coffee brewer was then “rediscovered” in the following years by the Americans, who, after introducing a glass cap and other modifications in the form and in the materials of this percolator, began to use it as their favourite coffee brewer for household usage.
Reversible filters
In Paris, in 1819, Morize deposited the patent for a simple coffee brewer with a reversible system, which, in 1849, was modified in its original form and was anchored to a scaffolding in order to facilitate the reversing and servicing procedures: in France, this filter was known as the “Russian Egg” or as the “boiler of Potsdam”. But this method found success only years later in Italy, where it started to be used to brew coffee in the “Neapolitan style”.
Pressure filters
Pressure filters forced boiling water through the coffee ground by using the force of steam pressure, which across 1800 was applied to several applications. This patent, deposited in London in 1822 by Mr. Rabaut, a Frenchman, was followed by dozens of imitations in Germany, France and Austria. The common feature for all these models was that steam pressure forced coffee upwards to the spout and then into the cup. In 1838, Mr. Lebrun from Paris launched a small and simple brass coffee brewer where steam pressure was instead forced downwards.
The “vapour fountain”
In 1833, Mr. Parker, an Englishman from London, patented a coffee brewer destined to widespread throughout the continent. This coffee brewer had a cylindrical body (in copper, nickel-plated or silver-plated brass), with a glass dome on the top and which was hung to a scaffolding, including a burner at its base. Boiling water then went upstream and was forced through the coffee filter with a pressure so high that the liquid bumped against the glass dome and went down again into the pot with a fountain-like effect.
The “vacuum” filters
The simplest form of this model consisted of two glass balls, vertically connected with each other, and held up by a pedestal like that of a laboratory alembic. Water climbed from the lower glass ball to mix with coffee ground into the upper ball. When the burner was removed, the air contained in the lower ball was cooled down, creating a vacuum which then swallowed up the coffee liquid out of the upper ball, forcing it through a filter, which detained the grounds. These coffee brewers were created in France in around 1840, and spread in different forms and materials throughout Europe and the American continent.
The “balance” or “compensation siphons”
These sophisticated and fascinating coffee machines were often manufactured in glass and ceramics. The functioning principle was that of vacuum systems, but, contrarily to glass balls, the containers were positioned on the same level and were held up by a “balance” structure with a counterweight. Moreover, the burner was equipped with a removable cap which automatically extinguished the flame. Under vacuum pressure, the coffee was swallowed up out of the boiler, leaving the grounds in the bottom of the glass container, so that the beverage was ready to be poured into the cup through the tap. The authorship of this machine is contended amongst Paris (Gabet, 1844), London (Preterre, 1849) and Vienna (Reiss, 1855).
“OH, CHE BELLO CAFFÈ!”
In Italy, until the late 1800, home coffee machines or brewers remained a privilege of aristocratic or middle-class families, while the rest of the population continued to boil water, a little coffee ground and much of other surrogates into a coffeepot or other similar pots. But then the first tinplated “Neapolitan coffee pot” was introduced into the Italian market, followed by other pressure coffee brewers denominated “Aquilas” and “Orso”, all manufactured in Ferrara, which were heated by means of a spirit burner.
During the following thirty years of 1900, in Italy, small companies such as “Eterna” in Pavia, “Simerac” in Ferrara, “Neowatt” and “Pavoni” in Milan and “Victoria Arduino” in Turin started to further develop the pressure system into nickel-plated coffee brewers with an elegant design and an electric-powered functioning. But the great success in household brewing was the aluminium “Moka Express” created by Alfonso Bialetti in 1933, which has remained almost unchanged with its typical octagonal shape in Deco style, from the postwar period to nowadays.
Finally, in the Forties and Fifties, Italian manufacturers continued to propose electric or stove coffee brewers with a renovated design and new finishing (the nickel-plating was replaced with chromium-plating), but they did not introduce innovations with regard to the true “system of preparation” of the beverage.
The Collection
As many others, Mauro Carli’s collection started eleven years ago with the discovery of his first mysterious and unknown object. As it was explained to Mr. Carli by the antiquarian from Lucca who sold it to him, this device was used to make coffee in the old times. The curiosity of seeing if other mysterious and different devices had been manufactured for the daily consumption of coffee encouraged Mr. Carli to search for other coffeepots and machines in dozens of antiquity markets and trade fairs. This world actually opened his eyes to an infinite variety of systems, machines and alembics, as well as to a wide selection of unexpected forms, materials and models, which were even more fascinating than the familiar “Moka” or the well-known “Napoletana”, generally associated to the figure of the Neapolitan theatre writer, Eduardo De Filippo. In order to select, understand and catalogue all different examples, the search for valuable “pieces” has always been accompanied by the study of available bibliography. His research still continues today in a more targeted and conscious manner, as antiquity fairs and markets can still offer so many surprises after an accurate search. Mauro Carli’s private collection, which the photos of this page make reference to, presently include 210 items from various countries and periods, mostly from the first half of 1800 to 1960s
M a u r o C a r l i (Collector)
Gaggia and the coffee cream
The innovation which spread to all Italian bars and restaurants in the postwar period (1948), represented by the introduction of the piston system patented by Achille Gaggia in Milan, was echoed also in the preparation of coffee at home. The previously existing pressure system had the defect of making a very bitter coffee and with a burnt-like taste. Ingeniously, Mr. Gaggia eliminated the use of vapour. To produce the best coffee, he only used boiling water which was forced and pushed trough the filter by means of a piston activated by a manual spring lever. This was the beginning of the so-called “age of coffee cream”.
In 1948, “Gilda” house produced a beautiful electric-powered coffee machine in aluminium and chromium-plated brass casting with wooden-coloured bakelite finishing. The two telescopic levers, when lowered, were able to charge the spring piston system and the boiling water was then forced through the coffee filter. When released, water passed through the filter producing a marvellous coffee cream directly into the cup.
To learn more:
E.C. Kvetko & D. Congdon-Martin, Coffee Antiques, U.S.A. 2000
I.Bersten, Coffee floats - Tea sinks, Sydney 1993
A. Fumagalli, Macchine da caffè, Milan 1990
H. Grégoire, Il caffè e I suoi oggetti, Turin 1989
E. & J.Bramah, L’arte di fare il caffè, Bergamo 1989
W.H. Ukers, All about coffee, New York 1922
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