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Illy art collection cups are produced by Illy caffe, the porcelain espresso cup was created by Matteo Thun in 1992.
The official illy Art Collections are signed and numbered, and produced in limited editions.

1990 illycaffè asked Matteo Thun to design an exclusively shaped cup. He tells the story in this way, "… it was a very technical seventy pages brief, with the request to extract from this knowledge, which for me was surprising and unexpected, the shape for an illy cup. I soon understood that this was a unique opportunity to scientifically and professionally develop not just an espresso cup, but the espresso cup. I was supplied with precise indications regarding the volume, diameter, quality of the brim on which you rest your lips, the special base for heat retention. So I was just the operating support that produced an idea already described within those technical constraints. Matteo Thun That is why the new illy cup was not created for esthetical reasons. It is rather the logical and practically inevitable consequence of the scientific knowledge that Ernesto Illy was able to construct over time regarding his own product." The form of the cup, designed in this way, has become a distinctive icon that is recognized in over 70 countries. PRDV