Prune: Bring back high-design cookbooks

Tyler Watamanuk on cookbooks that are a true visual treat.

I’ve made it a habit to check the cookbook section of any used bookstore I visit. Over the years, this routine has landed me a few real gems—Nik Sharma’s Season and Chez Panisse Vegetables, among them—but more often, it yields the usual suspects: Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Rick Bayless, and their best-selling titles. Earlier this year, though, I came across a true treasure: Living and Eating by John Pawson and Annie Bell. It immediately became a favorite in my growing cookbook collection.

The book is notable because Pawson, the lead author, is not a chef nor a food writer but a prolific architect and designer. (He’s done it all, including everything from sweeping cantilevered houses in Los Angeles to nineties-era Calvin Klein stores in New York.) Published in 2001, the 300-page book is substantial but not overwhelming. The cover is understated, featuring a relatively low-key photograph. (One might notice the blurry, in-motion figure reaching toward a perfectly roasted fish—an old architecture photography trick to introduce a sense of scale and life.)

Another title that has caught my eye—not once, but twice, in bookshops in both New York and Maryland—is from the 1970s: The Seasonal Kitchen by chef Perla Meyers. Despite its age and lack of interior photographs, it remains a joy to flip through, thanks to its strikingly effective typography—some of the best I’ve encountered in a cookbook. The design was created by Corchia de Harak, the firm founded by Rudolph de Harak and Al Corchia. Harak achieved wide recognition as a generational talent before he died in 2002. He designed shopping bags for The Met and signage for the museum’s Egyptian Wing, as well as a delightfully minimalist wall clock that sits in MoMA’s permanent collection. Their studio brought a level of precision and visual clarity to The Seasonal Kitchen that’s common in graphic design monographs, but rare in culinary publishing.

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