Kickstarting the book begins with the feature ideas, ensuring a good spread of focus. “We want to explore the ingredients across multiple mediums to make sure we have a good spread of art, literature, science, design, and popular culture,” says David. Then, the image research begins. Though, if a story produces a particularly strong or intriguing image, the process will be flipped backwards, adjusting the editorial angle to accommodate.
The lemon ended up producing some pretty compelling stories. Some that stand out to David are a piece focussing on the Medici’s and how lemons become a status symbol of the Renaissance; one on the creation of the Jif Lemon packaging – the process of which “informed the creation of Action Man as well as various ‘scented’ dolls” – as well as stories on Matisse and the infamous Bloomsbury Group. Research also surfaced some surprising facts that David had never encountered before, namely that the artist Joseph Beuys was a Nazi pilot who then co-founded the German Green Party. “You’ll have to read the book to find out how that ties into lemons, but it does!” he says.
As the design of the book was set with the initial edition, most of the visual “heavy-lifting” has already happened – a minimalist approach that lets the ingredient and commissioned and found imagery take centre stage. Now, David explains that the main visual process is the imagery, editing them, commissioning them and ensuring they’ve got the presence they deserve. Its also integral, David says, to make sure that the narrative is clear, so the reader doesn’t have to “work too hard”. Throughout the book you’ll encounter contemporary works like Bobby Doherty’s classic surreal still lives used for recipe images, and Baker & Evans up-close-and-personal shots, alongside classic paintings from the Bloomsbury Group, Duncan Grant and ancient wall paintings from Egypt.
What’s next for The Gourmand’s ingredient series, you might ask? Well, it looks like all of you fungi-loving foragers are going to be in for a treat…