INDUSTRY PROFILE
A magical world To honour the 10th anniversary of the Mumac Museum, BeanScene speaks to manager Barbara Foglia about transforming invisible machines into works of art.
The Mumac museum holds around 300 machines, including collections from Maurizio Cimbali and Enrico Maltoni.
W
hen people visit the Louvre in Paris, they go to appreciate centuries of fine art. When people visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York, they admire one of the largest collections of modern art, and when they visit the Mumac Museum of Coffee Machines in Milan, they witness the history and cultural phenomenon of espresso machine manufacturing. But the reality is, they discover so much more. The museum was first commissioned in 2012 to celebrate Gruppo Cimbali’s centenary. Architect Paolo Balzanelli and Valerio Cometti of V12 Design were the team responsible for transforming the former spare parts warehouse into a historical masterpiece. “We can therefore call Mumac ‘the’ coffee machine museum. It is the only one of its kind in the world, which resulted from the union of two passions and two collections: that of Maurizio Cimbali [Cimbali Group President] and Enrico
Maltoni, the world’s leading collector of professional espresso machines,” says Mumac Manager Barbara Foglia. The Cimbali family’s private collection has been preserve over time, from the first machine produced in the 1930s to the present day, encompassing primarily LaCimbali and Faema brands. Enrico Maltoni’s collection is full of unique pieces from espresso machine brands that have shaped the history of the industry. This includes the original Pavoni Ideale built on 1901 Bezzera’s patent, produced in 1905; the 1948 Gaggia Classica, the first lever machine to produce espresso coffee with crema; the gleaming Faema Saturno created in the late 1940s and early 1950s; and the D.P 47 designed in 1947 by Gio Ponti for La Pavoni in 1947. This machine was untraceable until only a few years ago. Its discovery is considered one of Enrico Maltoni’s most exciting acquisitions. “[It is] unquestionably the most prized and important piece in the collection,” Barbara says. “There are only two
examples in the world and the one in Mumac is the only model that is on permanent public display. The other belongs to a private collector.” The museum holds around 300 machines, of which approximately a third are on display. The others are available on rotation within the exhibition rooms or for loan both nationally and internationally. The museum’s best pieces have been lent to museums including the Triennale and ADI Design Museum in Milan, the Museo do Café in Santos in Brazil, Musée des Arts Décoratifs in the Louvre, Paris, and the Deutsches Museum in Munich, among others. The collection is continuously expanding with new acquisitions each year, making the heritage of the museum ever more comprehensive with the display of historical machines and contemporary models. At the heart of the museum is the “exploded view” of the LaCimbali M100 installation, which took proportionally longer to design and create than to
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