Olivetti × Campari

Announced May 14, 1970, at Olivetti's showroom on Corso Venezia, the Valentine Aperitivo took the shell of Ettore Sottsass and Perry A. King's 1969 Valentine typewriter case and gave it a second job. Campari, headquartered a few kilometres away in Sesto San Giovanni, had approached Olivetti about a travelling bar for its sales reps. Sottsass reportedly replied that reps were boring and designed it for everyone else.

The case is the same injection-moulded red ABS as the typewriter, with the same slide-off lid and the same moulded handle, lengthened by 30 mm to clear the height of Fortunato Depero's 1932 conical Campari Soda bottle. Inside, a moulded tray holds exactly five bottles. Sottsass argued that six was a party and five was a conversation, and Campari's packaging office, led by Renata Colombo, agreed after a long lunch.

The two orange ribbon-spool caps from the typewriter survive as screw lids on a pair of insulated ice wells. The lid, when removed, becomes a serving tray with a recessed beech board for slicing orange, and the crown-cap opener is moulded into the hinge in the shape of the typewriter's carriage-return lever. Domus ran it over two pages in its July issue, photographed on the rocks at Portofino.

Reception was warm in Milan and puzzled elsewhere. A Swiss reviewer complained there was nowhere to put the typewriter. Campari used the case in its 1971 poster campaign, which is now better known than the object itself.