Who knows that the water we drink can be up to eight hundred years old? That is, having rained eight hundred years before and after a passage through the mountains, the earth, the minerals, the memory, arrive perfect on our tables?

Who knows the complexity of the life of a bottle of mineral water? First of all, the concept itself, not known to all, that a bottle has a life cycle composed of various returns to the starting point, the company, in which it is stripped from ‘label, washed with extreme care, disinfected and put back into the circuit. In fact, a bottle can “return to the world” up to twenty times in a few years before leaving and going for recycling. Because glass has the beautiful advantage of transforming itself and not leaving environmental waste.

The “Chiarella” spring has a very deep and ancient history, made up of information very interesting. These elements could not fail to contribute to the definition of the project of a new glass bottle for the “Chiarella”, water that comes from the heart of Lake Como’s mountains. It is here, directly from the rocks of Mount Grona above Plesio, that its peculiar mix of minerals with historical and proven healthy properties comes from.

“The water glass bottle is a constant presence on people’s tables, one of the sacred places of family, friendship, meeting, conviviality. Designing a bottle of mineral water means working with this dimension and with the archetype. A beautiful and profound challenge for a designer.” told Lorenzo Palmeri. “The “Chiarella” bottle project brings together a chain of strong design themes such as the search for an archetype, an icon and the right gesture. Because the bottle contains and the water takes the shape of its container, which at that moment becomes its vehicle, it is a way of entering the world. In this sense, the approach was guided by the idea of sewing a container around this special water that could carry it with joy, with the right elegance, like a tailor-made haute couture suit”.

The “Chiarella” bottle has a reminiscent familiarity with “Moka”, the Italian coffee machine and somehow with the rigour, and elegance of an abstract idea of the military uniform. Two elements linked to the ancestral popular memory of every Italian.

The work with “Chiarella” meant entering into a relationship with a very strong family reality, so designing the new bottle was a shared, participatory process in which the heart necessarily entered, the witness of an attitude, of a strongly heard ethical approach.

Speaking about the bottle, the narrowest area at the waist, the belt, in addition to having a peculiar structural function, invites the naturalness of the gesture, which becomes immediate, spontaneous. It does not ask for the attention of sight. The work on the surface has led to the identification of some areas suitable for this narration, so in the reliefs on the base, you can recognize the mountains and the lake of the Bellagio area, the seat of the source, recognizable even simply by touch, as happens with the company name.

The bottle shines for the almost total absence of a label which here becomes a simple collar, printed on a special paper, which gives us some necessary information and tells of its “naked” beauty.

The cap was also the subject of design discussion and is characterized by a segnaletic line, which indicates whether the water is sparkling or natural, in a completely new way. Also in this case the desire for immediacy, for quick, immediate recognition, without unnecessary steps.