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When we talk about design we often hope we don’t sound too ignorant, because we don’t really understand this world that is attractive and appealing but that is also a little intimidating to the uninitiated.

After all, how many times have we found themselves confronted with innovative objects with strange and extravagant forms that sometimes fascinate us but other times, to be perfectly honest, leave us totally mystified?

Italy is at the forefront of the sector design, thanks to a long history of good taste, traditions, and the sense of beauty that Italians seem to have in their very DNA.

Everything is design, even a tap

The world of today is dominated by design, from the most everyday household objects and appliances to our smart phones, furniture and cars. Also in your choice of taps and faucets for the bathroom or the kitchen, you can fall in love at first sight with their interesting proportions and striking style. But how can be we really sure that an elegant design is compatible with genuine functionality?

The taps and bathroom fittings made by Palazzani are certainly a guarantee in this sense, as the goal we try to achieve every time we design a tap is that of creating a perfect combination of beauty and convenience, blending comfort and ease of use with innovative shapes. This is not always an easy task, as the design of a tap has to take a whole range of different factors into account.

How to choose a good tap or faucet

Good design is not the only factor when we are choosing a faucet, but usability and integration with the rest of the bathroom also have to be carefully considered. As far as practicality is concerned:

1.  A tap must be easy and straightforward to use. This may seem perfectly obvious, but at some time or other you have certainly found yourself in the bathroom of a restaurant or at a friend’s house staring at a faucet utterly unable to figure out how to turn it on or off.
2. A tap must have precise control. Once you have managed to turn the faucet on the problem is often that water splashes everywhere, so that as well as washing your hands you end up flooding the washstand and the floor or soaking your clothes.
3.  A tap must be easy to clean. Materials that are too delicate, shapes that are too complicated and poor quality chrome plating are all elements that can make it difficult to clean a faucet properly.

Then the various factors more closely related to design have to be to examined, as a tap must be well integrated with the style of the bathroom. For this reason it is always a good idea to decide straight away what kind of look your bathroom will have. There are many possible themes and variations, such as classic, elegant, baroque, French, country or shabby chic.

Once you have made the choice of your style you need to choose the right ceramic fittings and faucets to match. But here you must pay careful attention, as the faucet you have fallen in love with must be perfectly integrated with the wash basin and before you buy it you should make sure that there is enough room to easily and comfortably move your hands between the spout of the tap and the sink and between the tap and the wall or cabinet behind it.

A tap is therefore part of a much wider world than may seem to be the case at first glance and there are often many years of work and study behind each of our creations, followed by months of trials and testing before it can become the Palazzani tap that proudly shines out in your bathroom or your kitchen.

It easy to carry the label Made in Italy, handmade, created with care. It’s easy because often they are only words. In Palazzani these words take shape and become reality, something
tangible and easy to check.

A family story

For four generations we deal with the production of taps. Through the years the machinery, processes, design have changed and every day we try to follow the innovations and demands
of our customers around the world.

The only thing that has never changed is the passion and care that our workers put in to create and assemble the taps. A process that starts from the arrival of production materials to the quality testing and packaging. All eyes followed by skilled experts and hands over the years
and the experience they learn to every part of the tap, to find even the slightest flaw, to improve every aspect of production to have a very high quality product.

To do a tap it takes … the brass!

Do you believe it is impossible to get excited seeing the brass blocks? In our factory in Casalmorano it happens sometimes. When he gets the brass, and satin ordered tablets, it
seems to see the beautiful boxes of golden chocolates. Those squares are ready to merge and to be molded, to shape designs and studies, to realize what the designer has studied for
months. A big responsibility! And 'from brass that here in Palazzani you start to make a little dream, to give the matter to fantasy and imagination.

The bride technology craftsmanship

In our factory of 17,000 square meters we host art machinery and green technologies to reduce the environmental impact of our production. But the focus of our work is definitely in
the hands and in the commitment of our technicians and workers, in manufacturing, in humanity and in the experience that lies behind every component of our faucets, that are made with technology, design, heart and especially hands.
Knowing how hands holding valves and bolts, control the brass polishing, give life to the plating process, touching piece by piece faucets, govern lathe and wrenches, test the quality of taps before you begin the packaging and the shipments. We often speak of design and
quality of our products but these could not exist without our tap craftsmen.

Christmas is fast approaching, with all its special atmospheres, lights, colors and decorated trees. Christmas is a time for love and friendship expressed by gifts, so that we can amaze the people we are fond of and even spoil them a little. Milan is one of the favorite locations for Christmas shopping in Italy and in this period life in the city is a hectic round of shops and events, evenings at the theatre and good food.

Milan: the city of fashion and fun

Expo 2015 has been and gone but Milan has not lost its international character, with newly developed neighborhoods of Porta Nuova, new museums such as the Mudec, as well as the fashion district and all the usual artistic and cultural attractions.

In Corso Buenos Aires, one of the most popular shopping streets in Milan, which is always full of lights, perfumes and great bargains at Christmastime, you can find a hotel that combines the elegance and comfort of the 19th century with modern technology. This is the Best Western Hotel Galles in Piazza Lima.

Just a short walk from the Metro Station of Lima, the Hotel Galles awaits you with its comfortable rooms, suitable for visitors on a quick business trip as well as for families visiting Milan. Here elegance and design reign supreme, together with careful attention to all the needs of guests and a focus on the details. This is also the case for the choice of refined bathroom fittings, and the Hotel Galles has in fact opted for the taps of the Manhattan line by Palazzani to decorate their bathrooms in the standard rooms as well as in the luxurious “La Scala” and “Nabucco” suites.

EcoFriendly: because the future is in sustainability

Palazzani and the Hotel Galles have thus joined forces to make an important choice for the future of the environment and all of us. You can stay in a “Green Room” the CO2 emissions of which are compensated for and offset by the creation and safeguarding of a green area in the city of Rome. In fact the price of the room includes €2 which is donated to LifeGate and the guests who stay there are given a certificate to attest to this donation together with the normal receipt for their stay in the hotel.

But this is not all, because Palazzani has also installed aerators and flow regulators on the taps and showers of the hotel, which make it possible to save as much as 50% on water consumption. In conjunction with correct practices for separation and disposal of waste and refuse in the hotel and a careful selection of the materials used for the furniture this will ensure that your stay is firmly based on ecological awareness, not just on the comforts and pleasures of an exclusive 4 star hotel.

A spectacular view over the rooftops of Milan

After you have rested in the luxurious beds made by Dorelan and had a refreshing shower using the high-quality bathroom fittings of Palazzani, you’ll be ready to enjoy a buffet breakfast in the restaurant “La Terrazza” which overlooks the city. Here you can taste the delicacies created by Moreno Ungaretti, the young chef of the Hotel Galles who, despite his age, already has extensive experience in the world of high-class catering.

You will therefore be able to start the day with a truly fantastic breakfast buffet and there is no need to worry if you suffer from any allergies or food intolerances, as at the Hotel Galles special care and attention is given to guests who suffer from these kinds of problems.

Finally, after a long day spent shopping and sightseeing, you can treat yourself to a dinner in the restaurant with its spectacular panoramic view. In this way you can savor not only the flavors of a truly excellent meal but also the lights of a new and exciting Milan that never ceases to surprise.

Once you have found the home of your dreams, resolved all your initial perplexities in choosing the overall style and the furniture for every room, you have to deal with the

bathroom where you are faced with the age-old dilemma: a bath or a shower?

This is not just a problem that concerns the amount of space available, above all it’s a question of the different kind of character that distinguishes shower enthusiasts from people who prefer lounging in the bathtub. But we may just have found the perfect solution for everyone: the multifunctional shower.

The multifunctional shower: relaxation and well-being

The shower is normally synonymous with practicality, freshness, instant cleanliness and ease of use, while the bathtub is generally associated with long lazy hours spent relaxing in warm water, perhaps even while reading a good book.

Over the last few years these concepts have however been completely overturned and with the advent of multifunctional and chromotherapy showers the shower has become a genuine means of relaxation, like a miniature beauty farm in the home.

There are several types of multi-functional shower and we have created some that are truly outstanding as regards their elegance and design. They do not only feature the usual classic chrome-plated elements, as we have also decided to apply white ceramic, in order to create a unique design with a special visual impact.

Well-being with its roots in history

What is the real use of a multi-jet shower? One of the most popular treatments that these kinds of showers can provide is certainly the Scottish shower.

This is a very old technique that helps to encourage both microcirculation in the body and the drainage of fluids. It is important both for preventing and treating aesthetic problems such as cellulite, as well as for increasing the user’s energy levels. It consists in a rapid alternation of jets of cold and hot water, the temperature of which is gradually increased, directed onto the parts of the body that one wishes to stimulate or “reawaken”.

Thanks to the positioning of the jets in the lumbar and scapular areas of the back, the multifunctional showers of Palazzani represent a wonderfully soothing continuation of this ancient Scottish tradition. The single or double nozzle versions, made of ceramic or with chrome plating, can also be combined with chromotherapy shower-heads to create a space for total relaxation and well-being in the comfort of your own home.

We will waiting for you at Unicera Tiles, bathroom and kitchen Exhibition in Istanbul from 23rd to 27th february, hall 12 booth 1228 at Tuyap exhibition and congress center.

Italians have often been at the forefront of new developments in the history of technology and this was certainly the case for taps and faucets. As we soon learn from a visit to from the Museum of the Tap the first archaeological evidence of genuine taps are “valvulae” from the Ancient Roman era. These are taps of the “male” type, with a perforated cylinder inserted inside a water pipe, which can be rotated to permit or stop water from flowing.
But a lot of water has certainly passed under the proverbial bridge since Roman times and taps now incorporate some very complex technology.

Taps: how could we ever live without them?

Perhaps you have been lucky enough to hear your grandparents talking about the days when a bathroom in their house was an impossible dream and when people used a pump in the yard to get their water for drinking or washing. These tales remind us that, although the tap was invented in Ancient Roman times, mixers and designer taps as we now know them only appeared in the middle of the 20th century.

Where does the word “faucet” come from? It derives from the old French word fausset, from the verb falsar meaning “to drill” or “to bore” and in the Middle Ages it meant a bung for closing the hole of a barrel, or a tap for drawing liquid from a container. By the mid 19th century it had already taken on its current sense. The word “tap” instead comes from the Old English tæppa meaning a tapered stopper for the vent-hole of a cask. It is connected with the German noun Zapfen, which also means a “fir-cone”, due to its conical shape. These objects were originally solid but then were hollowed out like a short tube so that the contents of the cask could be drawn from them.

How a tap is made

Most taps are made of brass or stainless steel and then covered with a protective layer of nickel or chromium, by means of a plating process. Of course the quality of the tap depends on the raw materials used and by the manufacturing process used. At our plant in Casalmorano we aim to attain the highest standards. An essential practice is the operation of cleaning the brass that precedes the plating procedure. This is carried out by automated systems that produce a perfectly smooth surface, in order to ensure a better bond between the metal surface and the plating.

In our company we consider plating to be our particular strength, as it is thanks to this procedure that Palazzani taps keep on shining in your bathrooms day after day. The surfaces of all our items are covered in nickel or chromium with a thickness of no less than 20 microns, in strict compliance with the most exacting tests of durability and longevity, so that they will be as good as new for years and years.

A 40 minute train ride from the centre of Paris there is a magical place that evokes the history and charm of olden days, and that transports one back to the sumptuous and elegant atmosphere of 18th century court intrigues. We are of course talking about the legendary Palace of Versailles. Continue reading

The washbasin: the undisputed protagonist of bathroom furnishings, has undergone some truly radical changes over the years that have made it an element of design and distinction.

There are now a whole range of different types of washbasins: recessed, semi-recessed, wall-mounted, and top-mounted, which means they are supported by washstands or table units.
How can you choose the sink that best satisfies your aesthetic as well as practical needs? Continue reading