The $18,000 Royal Coffee Maker Is for the 1 Percent
If you happen to have $18,000 burning a hole in your pocket there are a number of things you can do: buy a car, have a pretty nice wedding, plan a luxury vacation, or throw down for a gold-plated Royal Coffee Maker. Yes, if you’re jonesing for caffeine, you could also take that $18k and purchase 4,500 cups of coffee—good, single origin coffee. But, if you happen to be the kind of person who has stores of cash to spend on semi-practical objets d’art, maybe you should check out this coffee maker from Royal Paris.
The Royal Coffee Maker embraces a time when coffee was a luxury available almost exclusively to literal royalty. A balance brewer, the Royal Coffee Maker “meticulously conceived by French artists, sculptors, metallurgists, and engineers” who used only the finest metals, crystal, and stone. The finished machine is designed to siphon perfectly heated water from chamber to chamber to produce a cup without bitterness. While brewing, the machine looks undeniably more elegant than most coffee makers, even before considering the fact that it is made of actual gold.
If gold seems too Trumpian for your taste, Royal Paris offers the machine in other luxurious materials, making it possible for you to own the exorbitantly expensive coffee maker best suited to your aesthetic. In addition to 24-karat gold, the kettle can be fashioned in silver or copper. The base of the coffee maker can be made with malachite, azurite, black obsidian, or mahogany. All the bespoke units (and all units are indeed bespoke) come with Baccarat crystal carafes and burner vases handmade in France.
If you find yourself wondering whether Afghan lapis lazuli azurite and 24-karat gold from a metallurgist-engineered custom alloy are really enough to justify the price, know too that all of the Royal Coffee Maker’s brass finishings are made using a traditional wax casting method that takes more than five hours. In all, it can take more than 50 hours for the craftsmen to assemble one Royal Coffee Maker. And if labor costs aren't enough to clinch it, note that Royal Paris claims to make the only coffee maker that lets you add booze before you brew.
If you feel you need to own the $18,000 Royal Coffee Maker in gold and azurite, or even the least expensive $10,400 Royal Coffee Maker in copper and mahogany, be prepared to wait. Royal Paris is producing a limited number of them, and all orders require a six- to eight-week lead time.
