The Silver Spoon
Published by Phaidon Press, 2005 (Hardback)
Originally published as Il cucchiaio d’argento by Editoriale Domus, 1950
Designed by Italo Lupi with Marina del Cinque and Alessandra Beluffi
Photographs by Jason Lowe
Drawings by Francesca Bazzurro
The Silver Spoon, originally published in 1950, is the ‘bible of authentic Italian cooking’. It is the first cookbook to be published by the art book publisher, Phaidon. It is an unwieldy book containing over 2,000 recipes. The design of the book compounds, I think, some of the problems of the organisation of the book: the design adds to the confusing organisation this by creating an opaque typographic hierarchy which is difficult to navigate. The blurb on the back of the book suggests that it is a ‘bible’ and ‘authentic’ - rather than suggest authenticity through design elements that signify Italy, the designers seem to have aimed for a cold authority and neutrality using the machine-readable FF OCR F, Helvetica and somewhat bland photographs that concentrate on food, not the culture or people of Italy. The only concession to a human warmth is the use of Baskerville italic and the naive line drawings that appear sporadically through the book.
It is interesting that this book purports to be for ‘everyone who loves good food’ yet fails to inspire the desire to cook: I think that this has nothing to do with the recipes which are perfectly good recipes, well researched, simple and easy to make, and more to do with the graphic language used which somehow misses the point of Italian cooking. Or at least the British public’s idea of Italian cooking.
Front cover
The cover shows a photograph of a silver spoon, photographed from above, arranged centrally and symmetrically against a white background with no shadows; on closer inspection, the handle of the spoon carries the Phaidon logo. The photograph appears to be of an actual object but certain parts of the spoon suggest that the image has been Photoshopped to achieve a hyperreal sheen: the bowl of the spoon is particularly abstracted. As with all Phaidon books, the word ‘Phaidon’ appears in the bottom left-hand corner of the cover, in this instance printed in black in a crimson red box. The title of the book is split across three lines with the middle line roughly across the centre of the cover. The title is set in a monospaced sans-serif, possibly FF OCR F, printed in silvery grey. The three words are letterspaced to fit the almost entire width of the cover. The cover is shiny with a gloss laminate. A bright green sticker is placed in the top right-hand corner with several straplines contextualising the content of the book and a small black line drawing of a fork twirling spaghetti.
The cover photograph is repeated on the spine of the book at full size and on the back cover showing, appropriately, the back of the spoon. The elements of the cover present a sophisticated decorative minimalism that eschews the usual conventions of cookbooks by not having pictures of food or of the author (In any case, The Silver Spoon is not credited to one particular author). The presence of the sticker suggests that the publishers felt that the contextual information on the back cover needed repeating on the front. Given that Phaidon were, until the publication of this book, primarily known as a publisher of art books, you can understand their nervousness.
Inside Pages
The book is 18 cm by 27 cm and, more importantly, 6.5 cm deep including covers - this is a hefty book! It is printed on a lightweight - with some see-through - white semi-coated paper in full colour. The book is divided into sections dealing with meat, fish, vegetables etc. Within these sections are subsections for pork, lamb, beef etc. A colour coded box in the top right-hand corner is used as an index but, with so many sections and sub-sections its use is limited. Sections open with a coloured double-page spread with the title of the section set in FF OCR F at a size that fits the width of the column; this causes confusion because, in order to fit the width, shorter section titles such as ‘Meat’ or ‘Fish’ appear much larger than longer words and are therefore proritised as the reader assumes that the larger size indicates some greater significance or importance. A similar problem occurs with the sub-sections which are treated in a similar typographic style.
The book uses a complicated and sometimes confusing grid: each page is divided in two, the wider inside column is used for commentary, recipe titles and methods while the narrower outside column is used for lists of ingredients. While the outside column stays at the same width the inside column sometimes becomes wider, extending into the central gutter: this is sometimes to do with the opening of a sub-section, sometimes to do with the presence of a photograph on the facing page; and occasionally to do with the ending of a sub-section but more often than not, it is seemingly at random.
Condensed Helvetica light in a percentage of black is used for the method and for the lists of ingredients. FF OCR F in uppercase and printed in a percentage of black is used for recipe titles which are inset slightly. A translation in Italian of the recipe title is set in italic FF OCR F, printed in the colour of the section. Italic Baskerville is also used in certain places such as the sub-section headings - its purpose is to add another voice which is used for commentary but the use of this dignified and refined typeface strikes a somewhat incongruous note with the machine-like FF OCR F.
Photographs are used sparingly throughout the book; not every recipe is illustrated. The photographs appear at full bleed almost on every other spread. The photographs are consistently styled and shot: the food is either shown on a white plate or bowl or in the dish in which it was cooked; the bowl or plate is shown at an angle suggesting that the reader is seated at a table with the food in front of them; a plain white cloth covers the table and no background is shown other than in the meals presented in the cooking dishes where there may be a suggestion of a cooker or chopping board. The presentation is, to some extent, neutral: this book does not create atmosphere through the use of props to signify ‘Italianess’ rather the food is left to speak for itself. The photographs are not saturated with colour and are, if anything, slightly pallid. The food is not unappealing but in its home-made qualities does not inspire aspiration or the desire to cook. The photographs are supplemented with simple and naive line drawings which confuse the message of the book further.