Faema

Faema was founded in 1945 by Carlo Ernesto Valente: the name is an acronym for “Fabbrica Apparecchiature Elettriche Meccaniche e Affini”, a factory of electrical and mechanical appliances, and at first the company made hair dryers, salon hood dryers, toasters, fans and vacuum cleaners. That account comes from MUMAC, the Cimbali Group coffee machine museum, which adds that in 1948 the Milanese barista Achille Gaggia turned to Valente to industrialise his lever patent. The result was the Gaggia Classica, “Gaggia patent, Officine FAEMA”, the first machine that “works without steam”; after three years the two entrepreneurs went their separate ways. Gaggia's own history page describes the same episode as the founding, in 1948, of “Officine Faema Brevetti Gaggia”.

According to the museum, the series of machines Valente went on to develop culminated in the E61, produced from 1961: its electro-volumetric pump spared the barista the effort of the lever, and pre-infusion improved extraction. The model has never gone out of production and has been updated over time: a Limited Edition was made in 2015 for FAEMA's 70th anniversary, and the E61 Anniversary in 2021 for the model's sixtieth. MUMAC also recalls the brand's long-standing link with cycling and the FAEMA Art&Caffeine flagship on via Forcella in Milan.

Faema has been part of Cimbali Group since 1995, as the group states on its organisation page; the group is headquartered in Binasco, in the province of Milan, where MUMAC is also located, and its other brands are LaCimbali, Casadio and Slayer. The official Prestige brochure carries a Binasco address and calls the machine “the icon of the 1970s”: it is now back in two versions, PRESTIGE and PRESTIGE+, both with a traditional thermosiphon system, and on the PRESTIGE+ the temperature of each group can be adjusted externally with knobs on the cup warmer.