The Exotic Feast: Fornasetti's 'Elephant Ear Soup' Recipe Plate

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The Exotic Feast: Fornasetti's 'Elephant Ear Soup' Recipe Plate
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This is an extraordinary and rare Piero Fornasetti Porcelain Plate … Read more The Exotic Feast: Fornasetti's 'Elephant Ear Soup' Recipe Plate
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This is an extraordinary and rare Piero Fornasetti Porcelain Plate titled "Elephant Ear Soup," part of a highly limited promotional series created for the New York leather goods firm Fleming Joffe.

• Design and Subject: The plate features a powerful, trompe-l'oeil design dominated by a highly detailed, close-up rendering of an elephant's face and ear, accented with a ceremonial tassel and headpiece in gold and brown tones. Overlaid on this dramatic visual is the mock recipe:
"Heat an elephant ear, add meat or chicken broth/soups... Cook a cup of rice to stew until soft (10 or 20 m.). When rice is cooked beat 8 eggs and slowly add lemon juice (4 lemons or mangos), beating constantly to keep eggs from curdling. Add egg and lemon mixture to boiling soup, stirring until cooked. Serve 8–10. Garnish. You can never forget the sumptuousness, the richness of this taste. Nevertheless it is very simple. To make this soup, you don't have to establish a Zen kind of concentration. You only need an elephant ear. Enough for 12–15"

• This piece is confirmed to be part of the distinct Piero Fornasetti series commissioned by Fleming Joffe, illustrating the "improbable recipe" theme with his signature graphic surrealism.
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• Artist/Designer: Piero Fornasetti (1913-1988)
• Title: Elephant Ear Soup
• Series: Fleming Joffe Recipe Plate Series
• Date: circa 1960s
• Material: Transfer-printed Porcelain, with hand-painted gold/brown accents
• Dimensions: 10 1/4 inches Diameter

Historical Context: The Art of Corporate Whimsy

This plate is an excellent example of mid-century corporate art patronage, where a utilitarian object was elevated into a piece of whimsical, conceptual art.

Fornasetti's Mid-Century Vision

Piero Fornasetti was celebrated for his graphic brilliance, using photographic and highly realistic black-and-white images on his ceramics before applying hand-painted gold accents. The "Elephant Ear Soup" design is a classic example of his surreal humor, where the sheer impossibility of the central ingredient ("You only need an elephant ear") satirizes both luxury cuisine and the exoticism demanded by elite mid-century consumers.

The Fleming Joffe Connection
The plate was one of a limited series of fourteen "improbable recipe" plates commissioned by the New York leather company Fleming Joffe over seven years. The company was renowned for its unconventional approach to marketing, commissioning top artists like Fornasetti, Andy Warhol (for advertising and showroom design), and poet Ogden Nash (for creative copy). This set of plates therefore represents a unique moment in design history, linking Italian artistic genius with cutting-edge American advertising of the 1960s.

Reference
• Fornasetti, Barnaba (Editor). Fornasetti: The Complete Universe. Milan: Rizzoli, 2010. (The definitive source documenting the Fleming Joffe promotional plates and the theme of the "decidedly improbable recipe").

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