Interview with Mepra’s Luca Prandelli

The MAG 11/22

INTERVIEW by Cristina Morozzi

Mepra was founded in 1947 by the Prandelli brothers in Lumezzane, a city in the northern Italian province of Brescia in the Lombardy region. A few years later, it became the first Italian company to produce steel cutlery and tableware. In 1953, Mepra decided to dedicate its production primarily to cutlery and flatware.

Cristina Morozzi (CM)
Lumezzane has become a district where metal products are made, especially housewares. What’s the reason for this?

Luca Prandelli (LP)
It’s a tradition that goes back to Roman times. The surrounding mountains are rich in metal, the valley is narrow, and the mines are small. In Roman times, slaves produced swords. Then from swords they switched to forks, partly because the land isn’t very fertile and it was easier to make good use of the mines, using water from the Gobbia River as the driving force.

CM
Tell us about the products Mepra produces.

LP
Mepra’s products include cutlery and cookware as well as multifunctional decorative items like ice buckets which can also be used as flower vases.

CM
In the brief presentation of Mepra on your website, you mention luxury art. Can you tell us more about this?

LP
The luxury art section of our brand is dedicated to the creation of custom products for hotels and cruise ships.

CM
And who is in charge of these pieces?

LP
We have an in-house team consisting of a technician and an engineer who translate the ideas of chefs into products. The collections always start with my cousin’s and my ideas as we work together.

CM
What was the reason for Pininfarina’s being chosen to create your own collection?

LP
Actually, they chose us! And it’s resulted in a valuable collaboration: Pininfarina makes truly functional pieces of industrial design.

CM
Do you have any star chefs as testimonials?

LP
All chefs are important to us, and their requests stimulate our creativity. Carlo Cracco’s restaurant in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele shopping gallery in Milan could be considered our showcase.

CM
Tell us a bit about your available finishes and colors.

LP
We offer products with a DVD finish, whereby titanium ions are deposited on the steel instead of it being galvanized. This special type of finish guarantees durability.

CM
Do you also offer special colors on request?

LP
We recently introduced new finishes like sandblasted gold, champagne and sandblasted silver. As craftsmen, we are willing to customize even very limited series on request.

CM
How many products does Mepra offer at the moment?

LP
We currently have 90 cutlery collections, 10 collections of trays and 6 collections of cookware, and each collection is available in 21 finishes. If you wanted to, you could set your table with a different color of cutlery for each course.