Italian Businessman Buried Inside Urn Shaped Like Coffeepot He Made Famous

The unusual urn even featured the famous “Omino con i baffi” (meaning “The little man with mustache” in Italian) pictogram printed on every pot the family-owned company produces.

In accordance with his wishes, the 92-year-old’s ashes were placed inside a giant version of the stove top espresso maker by his three children Alessandra, Antonello and Alfonso.

There are coffee lovers, there are coffee addicts, and then there’s Italian coffee icon Renato Bialetti.

According to various news reports, Bialetti was 93.

While Bialetti didn’t invent the traditional coffee pot, he was essential to popularizing it.

Bialetti took the modest sales of his father’s company, which had only manufactured 70,000 pots when he gained control in 1947, and spearheaded a massive marketing campaign across Italy for the pots, which were branded with a mustachioed caricature.

There, in the church of his childhood, the coffee pot urn was blessed by the priest during a funeral service. After the funeral, Bialetti was buried next to his wife at a family plot in Omegna, Italy. As of today, some 330 million of the pots have been sold worldwide.

ASSOCIATED PRESS Father Pietro Segato, parish priest of Casale Corte Cerro, stands behind a Moka pot containing the ashes of Renato Bialetti.