Culinary Satire: Fornasetti's 'Calcutta Minestrone' Recipe Plate
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This is an exceptionally rare and humorous Piero Fornasetti Porcelain Plate, part of a limited promotional series created for the New York leather goods firm Fleming Joffe. Titled "Calcutta Minestrone," it satirizes both culinary snobbery and the conventions of recipe illustration.

"• Design and Subject:
The plate features a whimsical but meticulously drawn illustration of a large lizard or monitor, surrounded by the ingredients for a complex soup, including a pumpkin and carrots. The text details a lengthy, preposterous recipe where the lizard's body is the main, and absurd, ingredient:
"The food faddist is a pathetic creature... He is insensitive to the artistry of cookery... cooking, though perhaps a humble and homely art, is nevertheless an art, for the cook is fundamentally, like the artist, is to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts."

"• Aesthetic: The design showcases Fornasetti's signature mid-century graphic style, combining realistic, naturalist illustration with surreal textual commentary and a strong black-and-white print accented with the color of the porcelain itself.
"• Marking: The reverse is typically marked with a Fornasetti factory stamp, identifying it as one of the highly collectible mid-century pieces.

"• Artist/Designer: Piero Fornasetti (1913-1988)
"• Title: Calcutta Minestrone
"• Series: Fleming Joffe Recipe Plate Series
"• Date: circa 1960s
"• Material: Transfer-printed Porcelain
"• Dimensions: 10 1/4 inches Diameter

Historical Context: High Art and Corporate Wit

This plate is a fascinating product of a unique collaboration between a visionary artist and an unusually sophisticated corporate client.

Fornasetti's Satirical Voice
Piero Fornasetti was renowned for using everyday objects as a vehicle for irony and philosophical commentary. The "Calcutta Minestrone" plate, like others in the series, uses the format of a genuine recipe to deliver a humorous, wordy manifesto about the nature of cooking, art, and the absurdity of food faddists. This piece is less about food and more about the pompous intellectualism of the mid-20th century, all delivered on a luxury piece of tableware.

The Fleming Joffe Patronage
The plates were created as exclusive New Year's gifts for the clientele of Fleming Joffe, a New York company specializing in exotic leather goods. Fornasetti created a total of fourteen different "improbable recipe" designs over seven years for the firm, establishing a legacy of corporate patronage that valued wit and high art.
Notably, Fleming Joffe's creative circle included other major figures: they commissioned advertisements and showroom designs from Andy Warhol, and combined his drawings with the light verse of poet Ogden Nash. This commission thus places Fornasetti in a rare and distinguished group of artists connected to a single, progressive mid-century American client.

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

(Ref: Ny8907H-nlm)


Condition:
Alterations: Original Condition Unaltered
Imperfections: Some Imperfections
Condition Notes: good condition

Origin:
Italy

Creator:
Brand: Piero Fornasetti; Artist: Piero Fornasetti; Designer: Piero Fornasetti

Materials & Techniques:
Porcelain

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Original Condition Unaltered; Some Imperfections; good condition