18 casanova Oktober 2016 sanitas troesch18 casanova Ottobre 2016 sanitas troesch

In Mr Umberto Gessi’s universe, at the beginning there was mechanics: the appeal of hands covered in grease, the strength of the bolt, the pleasure of assembling old and renewed parts, the fine-tuning. When young Umberto started dreaming, while busy repairing bicycles, he already had in his mind his ideal workshop: clean as a jewel, operational and genuine, where what matters is the pleasure of producing and not just money.His first love was the lathe, with which he could strive for the perfection of any component, conveying the best of mechanics’ art. Mr Umberto Gessi, who is now eighty-one years old, was born near Reggio Emilia, from a farmer family. In the post-war period, with no means or tools, life in the countryside was especially hard and one had to work with oxes. When Umberto was fourteen his family moved to Piemonte in a rising industrial area, looking for better living conditions. He found a job in a ball bearing factory, where the wage was good, but the work was boring and repetitive.So he started visiting workshops and factories of any kind, foundries, kitchen and bathroom producers, working for free with the only aim to truly learn the trade.And that’s how he found a job in a kitchen factory, where the owner was so impressed by Umberto’s skills that he offered him a shareholding, starting from the 5% till reaching the 15%. He enjoyed working there, Mr Umberto Gessi says, but they kept having difficulties with the taps available on the market, which were not appropriate for quality furniture nor reliable: they often got broken and it was not easy to source replacements.Together with his son Gian Luca, who was working for the same company, they decided the create “their own tap”: a folly, considering the competition on the market, but also an oppor-tunity, as on the market the product they had in mind was new on a quality and aesthetic level. In 1990, they inaugurated their first workshop in a 100sqm garage.

There, they designed the range “Griffe”, a traditional model with no mixer but uniquely beautiful, with the right proportion and of reliable quality.Gian Luca, who Mr Umberto grants has a great aesthetic sense, designed it. On the other hand, he took care of techni-que. In 1995, they moved to a bigger production plant, 500-600sqm, and they hired two helpers appointed to polishing: the surface of metal components has to be flawless, in order to allow a perfect plating. The process is quite deman-ding, expensive and with lot of wastes, but necessary for a high quality products.Griffe range had a great success on the market and flew off the shelves: it was the right product at the right moment. Gessi S.p.A. developed from the small workshop of the begin-ning until it became the first Italian exporter of bathroom taps and fittings, with the 13% of the market, over 500 employees only in Italy and branches in almost each continent.Their goal was and still is to produce a different product, more elegant and technologic. And so the range named indeed “Diverso” was born. It started Gessi designed taps series and was produced until few years ago.Gessi transformed the tap from a simple mechanism to open, supply and close water into an object of design, conveying the essential principle of the brand: “ function and emotion “.The secret of Gessi products has always been, besides aesthe-tic value, the exceptional care for details.Even now, the production is partially handcrafted, the reason being that the perfectionism taken to extreme – as Mr Umber-to says – needs one last “nudge” given by human hands.Undeniable ingredients are an innovative spirit, the courage to move the progress and the challenge to conventions.Still, the brand stands out in technologic avant-garde and pioneering design.This is confirmed by many awards, among which the Super-brand of Italy and the prestigious international prize Red Dot Design Award.

The master of taps

Two decades and an half ago, Mr. Umberto Gessi founded

a company that proposes tap in a different way,

not anymore as a simple mechanism to open supply

and close water,but into an elegant design

object for kitchenand bathroom.

A retrospective on the lifeof a simple and brilliant

businessmanof the Italian style.

Around the tap in Gessi Milano showroom has been built

a world of magical effects.

The introduction of a new “transfer” machinery, able to rotate the component in any direction allowing to work on it from any side, was an impor-tant step towards the technological evolution of the production. Umberto Gessi is pleased to remember that the new arrival was baptized as if it was a ship, throwing on it a bottle of champagne. At the beginning, the tap was made in fusion: first of all, they had to prepare the mould for the foundry, where the first phase of the production used to take place, then the final touch of handi-craft perfection was added. Later on, they started using an absolutely unknown method: the mould and the fusion were replaced by the brass bar, full or empty according to necessities.The technique to work on them is similar to sculp-ture, as working on marble blocks: the different components are shaped from the brass bar and then manually assembled.This is proof of the artistic vein with which a tap is born. This all happens in the name of Umberto Gessi’s unchanging motto: tidiness and cleanli-ness.The factory has to be clean and bright, the employee has to feel like home: using a cloth and degreaser he has to clean his designated position, leaving it in perfect conditions for the following working day.The factory itself is integrated with the surroun-ding with the aim of making working hours more enjoyable: it is placed in a multifunctional industrial park. The Gessi Park joins on 800 000sqm technology, eco-architecture and landscape. Production and working relationships are gathered inside the “Dream Factory”, rooted in

the territory and inspired by an ethic vision: Gessi values of well-being and care for man and nature. “Made in Gessi” and “Made with Love”. Offices, laboratories, experimen-tal activities and production are all settled in an architectural landscape made of fields, woods, creeks and small lakes, in the surrounding of Valsesia green hills. The message spread by Gessi design is elegance born from stylistic minimalist archetypes, with timeless sobriety, such as typical “Gessi shapes”: square, oval, rectangle, cone and even drop, the latter inspired by the shape of water itself.These aesthetic basics inspire Gessi Collections, turning “objects of daily use into little domestic sculptures”. These are golden words for Sanitas Troesch, who has always been endorsing the principle of bathroom and kitchen’s aesthetic and embracing habitability.Those which used to be utilitarian rooms now became placed where to stay, to live and to enjoy the feeling of interior design. Even brassware, among which the best Gessi collections, are crucial elements in Sanitas Trocesch’s idea of bathroom and kitchen furniture.Activities at Gessi company are carried out in harmony and familiarity, also from a human point of view: to this day, «Mr Umberto», as they call him, daily visits departments and offices saying hallo to colleagues and wishing everybody a good day at work. Mr Umberto collects vintage cars and bikes. When he was a young boy, he bought a secondhand “Guzzino”, a lightweight motorcycle he modified on his own. After that, he bought his first car, again a secondhand Lancia Ardea. Few years ago, chatting with his family, he mentioned en passant that he would have loved to have back his old “Guzzino”, a nice youth memory. And so, for his birthday, his son made him find just right a “Guz-zino” fixed and garaged, shining and bright.Umberto was glad and from that day he started collecting classic bikes coming up to 40 models. Then it was “Ardea” time, the first piece of his cars collection, which now counts 16 models.All vehicles are exposed in Gessi Park and contribute to make the environment pleasant for employees and visitors. With beauty, cleaning

and order, explains Mr Umberto, workers must be smiling and they have to feel always comfortable. In fact it is necessary everybody’s commit-ment to realize products “hard to do”, that preserve their uniqueness because the others “aren’t able to make them”, he states.Futuristic masterpieces, bright and full of fantasy, supplying water both from the floor and from the ceiling, mist jets, chromo therapy and much more. Customized products in shape and material: the rough piece can be chan-ged and completed in accordance with costumers needs.The latest model presented, “Equilibrio”, is named after balancing stones one upon each other by an artist with a fascinating and magical effect. Here, the client can choose the metal finishing, the surface treatment, the type of stone that forms the mixer lever, and so on. Water, for Umberto Gessi, it’s an element nearly sacred: “without water we wouldn’t exist” he affirms. “We must love water and treat it well.In products that provide this valuable element, paths must be sweet, without corners, they mustn’t create constrictions neither noise.All these elements, ideas and magic can be found in Gessi Milano, the exhibition center opened in 2013 in a historic building in the fashion district, conceived by Gian Luca Gessi and designed to make Gessi products be recognized as Italian style icons all over the world. Here, in an old cinema, a «secret garden» has been created on several levels, inspired to the same parameters of Gessi Park in Serravalle Sesia.Here we can find waterfalls, pools, underground gardens, high-tech projections and a real “Concept Lab” for interior architecture and bathro-oms fittings. Such a suggestive and exclusive place that even worldwide known fashion, lifestyle and luxury brands, often rent it for their shows and presentations. «Once they are here, they have a look around and discover our world of wellbeing» says Mr. Umberto winking. If you could go back in time, would you change anything in your life?We ask him. “No” he answers, <<I’d go back to be a mechanic and build my taps. I have been lucky, and I’m happy to see that my son and my grandchildren love the company as I do>>.Umberto Gessi is still the simple and brilliant man of the past, who is proud of his workshop tidy and clean like a jewel, even if it grew larger to

a multinational industrial size.The man who appreciates the great values and small timeless things.In the lobby of Gessi Milano there is a small wooden case with compartments containing sugar pills of various colors: those simple sugar pills which children of postwar used to love.<<They are difficult to find nowadays>> says the Master of taps taking a red pill and tastefully munching it.He offers a pill to us, too and for a moment we seem to see a lively and curious boy concentrated on repai-ring bicycles…

The factory surrounded by nature in Serravalle Sesia reflectsmr Umberto Gessi’s main values: beauty, cleanliness, tidiness and attention to men and nature.

The “Master of taps” is proud of his antique cars and motorbikes collection,exposed in the factory for employees and visitors pleasure