You've found the piece. Now the project.
Trade terms for professionals and design studios
Pick up an Inciso tap and the first decision is already in your fingers: a cross handle or a lever. Gessi treats them as two versions of one collection, printed as “Inciso +” and “Inciso −” in the catalogue. The body underneath stays the same: solid brass, smooth metal broken by a fine knurl. That is how we would read solid brass designer taps of this kind: settle the character, and only then the colour.
Gessi makes Inciso in Serravalle Sesia; the drawing is David Rockwell’s, and he is the first American designer the company has worked with. To our eye the cross leans towards the old brassware the catalogue cites as a source, while the lever is the quieter of the two. In a bathroom guests will use, the handle is what every visitor touches, so it deserves the longer discussion.
Follow the hand round the room. At the basin it meets three-hole groups, single-lever mixers, wall mixers on roses and a spout from the ceiling; next to it, a bidet mixer or a cross-handle bidet group. At the bath, rim groups and a floor-standing mixer; in the shower, thermostatics, heads and side jets; at the kitchen sink, two mixers. Holders, rails and suspended ceramics finish the set. With La Mercanti the client holds the cross version in one hand and the lever version in the other, and the hand decides.
Tell us which finishes you'd like to assess
Yes. Among the basin pieces Gessi lists a ceiling spout, which can also be made to a custom length between 150 and 1,900 mm (5.9 and 74.8 in). The catalogue shows it in copper, paired with its own knurled control. That length is the figure to settle early: it is taken on site, from the finished ceiling down to where the water should land, once the basin and its height are fixed.
It is the line printed on the catalogue cover, over a black-and-white New York street. Inside, Gessi says Rockwell gave Inciso a warm, modern and undetached allure, with subtle industrial details, and sums it up as “the warm modern sensibility of American Design, Made in Italy”. In practice the idea reads most clearly in the warmer finishes, bronze, brass and copper, set against dark stone or concrete.
The catalogue says David Rockwell is known for dramatic designs that play on the pleasurable and the spectacular. In Inciso that side lives in a few pieces: the ceiling spout, the wall cascade spouts and the rainfall heads of Ø 350 and Ø 500 mm (13.8 and 19.7 in). Our advice for an office washroom: one such piece is enough, and everything around it can stay calm.
Anywhere from 105 to 1,855 mm (4.1 to 73 in): Gessi offers the ceiling arm for its Ø 200 and Ø 300 mm heads (7.9 and 11.8 in) as a custom length. In a room with a high ceiling this is what brings the head down to a comfortable height. The measurement is taken from the finished ceiling, after the false ceiling, if there is one, has been drawn. La Mercanti checks that figure on the section drawing.
A single-lever bidet mixer and a bidet group with cross handles. Gessi’s total look also has a suspended ceramic bidet, in gloss white, matt white or matt black. A sensible rule is to follow the basin: a three-hole cross group at the basin calls for the cross group at the bidet, while a single-lever basin mixer pairs naturally with the single-lever bidet.
Rim, floor or wall: Inciso can feed a bath three ways, and a wall spout adds a fourth option. A sequence for settling the bath pieces while the room is still a set of drawings.
The first question for an Inciso bath is the position of the tub. Gessi offers pieces for the rim, for the floor and for the wall, so the layout narrows the family before any model is named. A tub built in against tiles and a tub standing free in the room lead to different pages of the catalogue.
Gessi lists rim groups with a hand shower, with a spout or without one, each in a cross or a lever version. The catalogue does not state how many holes they take, so the drilling of the tub is checked against the drawing of the chosen group before the tub itself is ordered.
For a freestanding tub there is the floor-standing bath mixer with hand shower, again with a cross or a lever. The catalogue pictures it in bronze. Because it rises from the floor, its point is marked on the plan and agreed with the plumber before the floor finish goes down.
The collection also includes bath mixers for the wall. They are planned while the wall is still open, so that pipework and finished surface meet at the right height above the rim. It is the cleanest solution when the tub sits in a niche and the rim should stay clear.
Inciso has wall spouts of 210 or 255 mm (8.3 or 10 in). The catalogue does not tie them to the basin or the bath, so the length is chosen against the room itself: how far the water has to travel from the tiled wall to the point where it should fall.
