Fornasetti Fleming Joffe Recipe Plate, Elephant Ear Soup Italy, 1967–1974

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Description

Fornasetti Fleming Joffe Recipe Plate, Elephant Ear Soup
Italy, 1967–1974

An elephant looks out of this plate from very close … Read more Fornasetti Fleming Joffe Recipe Plate, Elephant Ear Soup
Italy, 1967–1974

An elephant looks out of this plate from very close up — one wise eye, a wrinkled temple and the fold of an ear — dressed for a procession in a jeweled headband, a gold boss with a swinging tassel and a gold flower on the ear. Written in the pale hollow of its cheek, in Fornasetti’s own hand-lettering, is a recipe for soup made from that ear.

The recipe is a completely genuine Greek egg-and-lemon soup, right down to the eight eggs and the warning not to let them curdle, with an elephant ear swapped in for the chicken. Then the pitch: glorious, unforgettable, and yet very simple. You don’t have to establish a Zen kind of concentration. You only need an elephant ear.

These were never sold. A New York leather company that dealt in exotic skins gave them to its best clients as New Year presents, two a year for seven years, boxed in a case made to look like hide. The same company had Andy Warhol doing its advertising. Hang it in a kitchen or dining room, or lean it on a shelf in a study or a bar where people will pick it up and start reading — which they will, because everyone does.

Dimensions
Diameter: 10¼ inches (26 cm)

Condition
Good condition.

A Little History
Piero Fornasetti (1913–1988) made something over eleven thousand objects from his Milan studio, most of them built on old engraved illustration put somewhere unexpected. This series of fourteen recipe plates was commissioned by Fleming Joffe Ltd. of New York, and the other designs are just as improbable: Snake a la Cleopatra, Cobra a l’Indienne, Python a l’Orange, Coquille Crocodile, Tortoise Risotto. One is named for a synthetic leather DuPont launched in 1963, which was a joke at the expense of the client’s own competition.

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