What began as a simple idea--giving away free brouchures with illustrations and recipes to advertise food and food brands--became so popular by the mid-20th century that recipe brochures, replete with colorful images of ornate dishes, were fixtures in every housewife's kitchen across America. This book brings together the best--and most unbelievably kitschy--images from a broad selection of such brochures.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hold the mayo!,
This review is from: Kitchen Kitsch: Vintage Food Graphics (Paperback)
Was vintage food advertising really this garish? Yes it was, according to Karel Ann Marling in her book `As Seen On TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s', advertisers deliberately made food garish and bright and forced a contrast between objects and backgrounds. For instance, a pink and white cake would be placed on a green satin tablecloth. There are plenty of examples like this in `Kitchen Kitsch', either paintings (a chance for commercial artist to use even brighter colors) or photographs.The majority of the illustrations come from the forties and fifties. My favorites are the paintings of jello, turned out from a mould, streamlined with highlights and looking just like Emerald City from the movie, `The Wizard of Oz'. Not only pictures of food but recipe book covers, can and box labels, period ads and more. All the pictures are in color and as this is a Taschen `Icon' book there is no text or information about the pictures but editor Jim Heimann has created a fun book about yesteryears grub. If you have the stomach for it have a look at `The Gallery of Regrettable Food' by James Lileks. His book has very similar pictures but he uses them to write some very funny and biting text about food fads of the fifties and the book is a treat to look at as well.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Scary pictures you'll love,
By "pinkpoodle11" (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Kitchen Kitsch: Vintage Food Graphics (Paperback)
This book reminded me of my Grandma's old copy of the Betty Crocker cookbook. I always found the hypersaturated photos of jello molds, chicken liver appetizers, and roasted suckling pigs amusing, yet very unappetizing. Her cookbook had almost completely fallen apart, so I cut out the pictures (like the ones in this book) and put them on my frige. Of course, people didn't get the humor in it. When I found this book, I was pleased to see that others were fascinated with cooking trends and food advertising in the 50's and 60's. I give the book 3 stars only because there is hardly any text, and I would have liked an discussion about kitchen kitsch. I have the book on my coffee table and people always seem to get a kick out of the hilarious ads and photos of weird entrees. I still like to page through it for a laugh.
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